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Health Care Administration

Health care administration (HCA) is one of the most important and exciting areas of business and public policy. California State University, Long Beach is one of fourteen U.S. universities with both accredited graduate and undergraduate health administration programs. Our graduate program is fully accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Health Management Education (CAHME) and our undergraduate program is a fully certified member of the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA). 

HHS Building

 

Our curriculum features a strong core of courses in the essential functions of management, with electives that allow students to pursue particular interests such as the specialized site of care courses in long term care administration, hospital management, managed care, and medical group practice management.

Our faculty includes both nationally recognized experts and executive practitioners of leading Southern California healthcare organizations (leading to numerous opportunities for networking and employment). Our undergraduate and graduate classes are offered in a variety of time and mode of delivery including face-to-face, hybrid, and online to accommodate adult learners.

Our core values are collaboration, integrity, compassion, leadership, sustainable, trust, professional, and innovation.

Collaboration - continue to build relationships across disciplines and the communities we serve. Collaboration reminds us we won’t thrive without recognizing one another’s strengths. Collaboration promotes communication that is open, honest, and non-judgmental to support students’ and faculty to reach their full potential and evolve together.

Integrity - includes open and truthful communication, fair and consistent treatment of others while staying committed to our word and values.

Compassion - teaching from the heart. Embracing student diversity. Understanding various student needs as a result of their different backgrounds and situations. Exhibiting kindness. Guide students to explore. Empathy for peers and colleagues, especially in difficult times.

Leadership - empower students and faculty to be successful leaders in a diverse healthcare community. Foster the next generation of future leaders who have a strong sense of self-awareness has the ability to work effectively with others and who are civically and socially engaged.

Sustainable – strive for department infrastructure that meets the needs of present and future students.  Teaching and research from a base of industry knowledge and advancement that helps us a maintain a high value workforce pipeline of health care professionals. 

Trust – nurture department relationships are consistent, emphatic, reliable, and truthful. Build trust through the following behaviors as examples; Admitting weakness, being honest, valuing each other’s experience and expertise, keeping your word, following through, accountability, being a team player, having each other backs.

Professional - build, demonstrate, and acknowledge professionalism (being accountable, reliable, setting high standard of conducts, teamwork, respect of others) and ethical practices in our teaching, research and services. Demonstrating we care about our students learning experience, conducting and disseminating high quality research, preparing our students as competitive candidates in the job market.

Innovation – support, foster, and reward creative thinking, cutting edge ideas, problem solving, and advancement in our teaching, research and services toward improvement of health care delivery. 

Our undergraduate program (BSHCA) is a full-certified member of the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA). It emphasizes our students' preparedness for the workforce, with health care industry-specific courses in the basic business functions and a mandatory internship in a health care organization. While obtaining the Bachelor of Science in HCA, our undergraduate students may also pursue a business administration minor in several options including Finance, Information Systems, Human Resources Management, and Marketing from College of Business.

Our Certificate in Health Care Administration is similar to a minor, and students may take this during their undergraduate studies in another non-HCA major. 

Our traditional and accelerated-format graduate MSHCA programs are fully accredited by the Commission for Accreditation for Health Management Education (CAHME). The Programs were designed for persons with a variety of undergraduate experiences who give evidence of interest and potential for success in health care management or research.

The accelerated program combines both online and in-person weekend graduate instruction; its more intensive pace allows students—primarily managers and clinicians—to complete a master's degree in just two years.

 

health care administrator in meeting

Graduates work as analysts, administrative support staff, customer service, managers, consultants, independent business owners, information specialists in many different kinds of organizations (both public and private) including hospitals, long-term care or medical facilities, ancillary providers (e.g. Labs, Durable Medical Equipment, and Pharmacy), health insurance companies, and government health agencies.