Online Masters in Healthcare Administration will help meet growing demand for health system administrators during COVID-19 recovery

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The University of California at Los Angeles's Fielding School of Public Health, ranked #11 among schools of public health by U.S. News & World Report, recently announced the launch of its first online Masters of Healthcare Administration (MHA). The new degree program will enable aspiring health care leaders and administrators to access online courses from UCLA's top-ranked public health program, building skills critically needed by hospitals, health systems and other providers during the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Leading in the modern healthcare enterprise is increasingly complex, and it increases a unique combination of skills that span system administration, coordinated care management, and an increased focus on data and information technology," said Dr. Leah Vriesman, Executive Director of Executive Programs in Health Policy & Management at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health. "Today's global public health threats have underscored the ways in which our society depends on the professionals who manage and lead healthcare systems in an increasingly connected and interdependent world."

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare management roles were already growing at a rate much faster than most other occupations in the broader economy, due to an aging U.S. population and growing demand for health services. A 2019 analysis from the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast that demand for medical and health services managers will grow at a projected 32 percent from 2019 to 2029.

To build the online MHA program, scheduled to open for enrollment in Summer 2021, UCLA selected independent instructional design firm iDesign, which has worked with more than 100 institutions to design, build and support award-winning online courses. A team of UCLA faculty experts is now working with iDesign to complete a "curriculum mapping" and course design process to translate course content from the Fielding School of Public Health into a fully-online degree for emerging healthcare administration professionals.

Each course will use cutting-edge teaching methods and professional production coupled with rich interactive video content, featuring some of the country's top healthcare and public health educators and professionals. Working closely with instructional design experts from iDesign, UCLA Fielding faculty and leadership will build and launch eighteen online courses for the Masters of Healthcare Administration over the next 12 months.

"To help our colleagues at UCLA build this program, it was important for us to design courses that could balance the discipline's growing emphasis on data and information with the need to educate students on the type of socially-conscious, collaborative leadership required in the healthcare context," said Paxton Riter, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of iDesign. "This work is about creating a virtual educational environment befitting the professionals who play such a critical role in ensuring strong patient outcomes and healthy communities."

iDesign's faculty-centric design process was the first among instructional design service providers to meet the rigorous Quality Matters review and certification standards. The organization brings deep expertise in the development of online courses and degree programs in allied health, nursing, healthcare administration, and health information.

Over the course of the next five years, a team of instructional designers will provide ongoing support and continuous improvement services to UCLA, enabling Fielding faculty to make periodic updates to the courses to stay current with emerging trends in public health and healthcare administration.

‍

‍