Executive MPA Program

• Admission Requirements
• Degree Requirements
• Two Year Course Rotation
• EHCA vs. MBA
• Program Cost & Financial Aid
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Faculty
• Contact Information
• Department of Social Sciences
• College of Arts & Sciences

• UT Tyler
• Executive MPA Program

Health Care Administration (Executive MPA) at UT Tyler

EHCA vs. MBA

M.P.A. In Health Care Administration vs. M.B.A.

Many professionals who are considering a career in health care management and administration are faced with deciding which graduate program will best serve their educational and professional needs. Unlike MBA programs, our program is specifically designed to provide a health care-based curriculum. Our courses are taught by faculty members who have been recruited from around the country and who have served as health care professionals, administrators and policy specialists during their careers.

MBA programs, on the other hand, offer only a few unique health administration courses and experiences for their students. The EHCA MPA Program is specifically designed for health care professionals seeking to advance their careers in health care administration. This advanced graduate education program is singularly focused on the health care industry.

An essential characteristic that can help distinguish graduate programs for health care professionals is both the academic and field experiences of the faculty. Faculty members of the EHCA Program have held positions such as: Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Operating Officer (COO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Strategic Planner, Hospital Marketer, Health Policy Analyist and Health Care Consultant. Typically, MBA faculty members are experts in their chosen business fields but are not specialized in health care administration.

Compared to courses in traditional MBA programs

• Our Health Care Marketing course not only applies the principles of product and services marketing to health care services, but also emphasizes the marketing of concepts such as obesity, smoking cessation, fighting cancer, etc.
• Our Health Care Accounting and Finance courses not only teach the principles of accounting, but also the specific requirements of Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP and accounting for private insurance programs and formats such as HMOs, PPOs, and other capitated programs.
• Our Health Economics course covers the primary tenets of macroeconomics, and also delves into the health care industry with an emphasis on the economic issues that affect medical care delivery and finance.
• Our Human Resources Management course looks at the difficulty of managing a highly educated professional workforce including nurses and physicians, with ever-shrinking availability of resources, and ever-increasing demands for more services.

The Executive Health Care Administration MPA Program at The University of Texas at Tyler is designed to provide students with the working knowledge specifically needed to effectively manage health services organizations in the private and public sectors - rather than providing generic business courses that have little or no emphasis on health care issues and topics.

The Hybrid Curriculum vs. The Totally Online Program

The EHCA MPA Program is offered in what is called a hybrid format. This means that the students in the program spend face-to-face time in the classroom with their professors in a traditional classroom setting at the beginning of each semester (during our intensive week) and complete the remainder of the work and assignments for each course online.

A fully "online" MBA program allows the student to complete all of their work off-site in an online format but does not allow for any face-to-face communication between faculty and students.

The EHCA MPA Program strongly believes in the power of the face-to-face experience between student and professor while recognizing the busy working health care professional cannot commit to the course schedules traditionally offered by universities.

In other words, the EHCA MPA Program believes that the hybrid format offers the best of both worlds, an opportunity to meet and discuss course material and health care issues face-to-face with their professors while completing most of the course work online.