Required Core Courses

1. Health Law
2. Managing Physician Performance
3. Quality
4. Ethical Challenges
5. Financial Decision Making
6. Physician in Management - Marketing
7. Physician in Management - Influence
8. Physician in Management - Negotiation
9. Medical Informatics

Course Core Descriptions

Physician executives must have knowledge of the core competencies needed in health care management. Candidates can take the courses through ACPE or provide transcripts that show the information has been covered in other tested graduate level courses. Knowledge of the core courses will be evaluated with a written exercise during the Tutorial.

Health Law-Examination of today's hottest healthcare issues: confidentiality, managed care contracting, patient rights, equal opportunity in the workplace, problem physicians, peer review.

Managing Physician Performance-Recruiting and hiring, defining job expectations, evaluating performance, giving effective feedback, motivating staff, evaluating compensation plans.

Quality-Techniques used to measure and manage delivery of quality patient care: Total quality management, outcomes management, clinical guidelines, minimizing medical errors, patient satisfaction surveys and report cards.

Ethics-How to evaluate your organization's policies and procedures on ethics, manage ethical conflicts at the bedside, choose the right members for ethics committee, and guide your organization through ethical minefields.

Financial Decision Making-Understand financial statements and what they say about your organization: how to use financial ratios, price your services, prepare an effective budget.

Marketing-Key marketing concepts and strategies and their use in health care organizations: target markets, competitive advantage, differential advantage, marketing mix, relationship marketing, branding.

Influence-Organizational characteristics and the roles of power, authority, and perception as they relate to the physician executive's ability to influence others. Causes of organizational and specialty turf conflicts and how to deal with them.

Negotiation-Rules associated with negotiation processes - how and when to apply them, how to recognize and defend against them. Identifying what you want and learning how to get it. Knowing when to walk away.

Medical Informatics-Fundamentals of clinical computing, including hardware, software, systems and networks. Challenges of clinical data management. Preparing your staff for new information technology.