title: Managing today's complex healthcare business enterprise: reflections on distinctive requirements of healthcare management education.
abstract: In early 2001, the community of educational programs offering master's-level education in healthcare management began an odyssey to modernize its approach to the organization and delivery of healthcare management education. The community recognized that cumulative long-term changes within healthcare management practice required a careful examination of healthcare management context and manpower requirements. This article suggests an evidence-based rationale for defining the distinctive elements of healthcare management, thus suggesting a basis for review and transformation of master's-level healthcare management curricula. It also suggests ways to modernize these curricula in a manner that recognizes the distinctiveness of the healthcare business enterprise as well as the changing management roles and careers within these complex organizations and systems. Through such efforts, the healthcare management master's-level education community would be better prepared to meet current and future challenges, to increase its relevance to the management practice community, and to allocate scarce faculty and program resources more effectively.
authors.forename: William E
authors.initials: WE
authors.lastname: Welton
mesh_terms: D000068:Accreditation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002322:Career Mobility; D003479:Curriculum; D004500:Education, Graduate / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006270:Health Facility Administrators / Q000193:education*; D006298:Health Services Administration / Q000592:standards; D006739:Hospital Administration / Q000193:education; D006801:Humans; D007857:Leadership; D017146:Models, Organizational; D011361:Professional Competence; D012576:Schools, Health Occupations / Q000592:standards; D014481:United States