A new program has been created through the combined efforts of the Health Information Management (HIM) program in the Doisy School of Allied Health Professions and the Masters in Health Administration (MHA) program in the School of Public Health.
Jody Smith serves as chairperson of the HIM program and Richard Kurz is the chairperson of the MHA program. The collaboration of these two programs has resulted in the formation of the HIM-MHA master’s degree program, which combines the curricula of the two individual programs while meeting all of the requirements for both degrees.
The program was approved earlier this year but is being advertised to applicants for the first time this fall. Both the HIM program and the MHA program are well established at Saint Louis University are accredited by national accrediting bodies.
Students receive both degrees at the end of their five years of study. By doing this, a year of tuition is saved by enrollment in the joint degree program.
Joe Schoeck is currently enrolled in the program, and appreciates the fact that the program enables students to save time and money with cutting out a whole year of courses.
At the same time, he believes that this aspect seems to rush the students and that not everyone is ready for the jump to graduate studies.
“I’d definitely recommend it,” Schoeck said. “It is good for people who like health care but know that they don’t want to be a doctor.”
Schoeck was thinking about being pre-med, but he decided that he would rather do the business part of health care instead of the clinical part.
“It’s great to go just one more year and get a master’s,” Schoeck said. “It is challenging, but not the hardest thing ever.”
Eventually, Schoeck would like to have a career in upper management at a hospital or a health care system.
According to the program’s proposal, the economic, political and technological environment in health care presents unprecedented challenges and opportunities for those professionals trained in healthcare and health information management.
The two areas that are identified as most significant are the management of professionals and information management. The HIM-MHA program was developed to respond to this major opportunity and challenge.
Admission to the combined program is available to freshmen and sophomore undergraduate students. To remain in the program, the student must have a 2.8 GPA at the end of the first year (30-31 semester hours) and a 3.0 cumulative GPA at the end of the second and third years.
Beginning in the fourth year, students in the program must maintain an overall GPA of 3.0 with no grade lower than a C.
