Business Foundations (X545) takes place during the Summer Semester and acts as a “business boot camp” for MSHM students. This course is completely online to host both residential and non-residential students.

The students of X545 learn the business side of the healthcare industry and develop applicable skills in business acumen, data analytics, and leadership throughout this intensive 4-week course.

Topics Studied:

Finance

• Instructed by Professor Thomas Rearick
• Topics covered range from assessing future value, time value/present value, and model for required return to determining risk level and cash flows.

Ethics

• Instructed by Professor Josh Perry
• This course integrates relevant ethics literature and class discussion to reflect on healthcare ethics topics.

Operations Management

• Instructed by Professor Carl Briggs
• Topics covered range from the supply chain, LEAN, and process flow to agile and risk management.

Strategy and Innovation

• Instructed by Professor Richard Magjuka
• Topics covered range from operational strategy and business proposition to analyzing and evaluation of business situations.

Quantitative Analysis

• Instructed by Professor Aaron Perry
• Topics covered range from pivot tables, look-ups, and digital dashboards to non-linear models and advanced simulations.

Marketing

• Instructed by Professor Joshua Gildea
• Student learning objectives:
  • Explain the role of marketing in creating successful business results. This will be accomplished by both theoretical concepts, as well as, benchmarking successful marketing practices of other industries that could be applied to life science and/or healthcare companies.
  •  Demonstrate how the fundamental principles of marketing are related and can be integrated to create sound business strategies.
  • Develop a methodology for determining customer/consumer needs and create initiatives that help increase sales, increase consumer satisfaction, and create positive ROIs.
  • Conduct a rigorous market analysis of a life science initiative by applying marketing research techniques that are appropriate for the life science and healthcare industries.
  • Create a comprehensive market plan that is linked to an overall business strategy within life science or healthcare environment and design appropriate metrics to measure performance.

Accounting

• Instructed by Professor Christopher Cook
• Student learning objectives:
  • ​Section 1: Collecting & Organizing Data
    • Identify the ways accounting benefits society
    • ​Identify reporting entities
    • Identify the elements of the accounting equation.
    • Show how business events affect the accounting equation
    • Interpret information shown in an accounting equation
    • Classify business events as assets source, use or exchange transactions
  • ​Section 2: Reporting Information
    • ​Prepare an Income Statement, Stockholders Equity and Balance Sheet
    • ​Prepare a Statement of Cash Flows
    • ​Distinguish between permanent & temporary accounts.
    • Record business events