Teaching Health-Care Operations in the MBA Program at Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management

This paper describes a case-based MBA elective “Health Care Operations” (HCO) developed by an instructor without prior education, consulting, or research experience in the health-care field. HCO helps MBA students analyze health-care organizations using both qualitative and quantitative principles of operations management. The course outline covers (1) designing health-care delivery systems, (2) capacity planning and decision making under uncertainty, and (3) process failure, learning, and improvement. The paper identifies challenges faced in the design and delivery of the course as well as lessons learned. I hope that this paper will be useful for other instructors who want to teach health-care operations.