FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Terry Olbrysh
(602) 496-0877
Terry.Olbrysh@asu.edu
ASU College of Nursing Launches Nation’s First
Master of Healthcare Innovation degree
TEMPE, Ariz., June 29, 2006 – The Arizona State University College of Nursing is introducing the nation’s first dedicated Master of Healthcare Innovation (MHI) Program accessible anywhere in the U.S., Dean Bernadette Melnyk said. The program begins fall semester.
The program seeks to prepare innovative healthcare leaders to address changes and challenges of the current healthcare system. MHI seeks to prepare its graduates for Chief Nursing Executive, CE/VP Healthcare Administrator, Clinical/Technology Officer, Department Director, and entrepreneurial career positions.
“As an industry, healthcare continues to change at an increasingly rapid pace, integrating complex technology, clinical devices, sophisticated database programs, genomic pharmacology, and biotechnology,” Dr. Melnyk said. “Given these dynamics, healthcare leaders need skills in understanding, managing, creating and evaluating the continually present innovations necessary for progress. While innovation content and coursework are interspersed within many collegiate programs, no program completely dedicated to Healthcare Innovation currently exists.”
The unique Master of Healthcare Innovation distance education initiative is led by the ASU College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation in collaboration with the ASU School of Health Management and Policy and the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication. The program offers a futuristic educational approach to develop healthcare leaders from multiple disciplines as innovators to transform the current healthcare system to improve health outcomes and costs for patients and healthcare providers, enhance the quality of healthcare services, and better integrate members of the community into the healthcare system. Leadership, bioethics, technology, team building, personal development, and evidence-based practice are core themes throughout the program.
Student Target Audience
The student target audience for the new master’s program includes both current and aspiring healthcare leaders in traditional hospital facilities and other healthcare organizations including long-term care, outpatient, clinic settings, and support agencies. The College of Nursing hopes to attract a diverse group of students who have a risk-taking entrepreneurial mindset and a commitment to improve healthcare.
The first cohort for MHI will be limited to 20 students to provide an extensive interaction and discussion environment and one-on-one attention.
The program includes nine courses emphasizing the principles of innovation, systems thinking for innovators, the integration of technology innovation, the individual and innovation, evidence-based innovations, financing for innovation, the challenges of health policy and innovation, and the management of outcomes resulting from innovation. In addition, six of the 33 credit hours are dedicated to directed study in which the student explores a specific area of interest in a real world healthcare setting.
MHI Offers Entrepreneurial Experience Accessible Anywhere
The hybrid distance and immersion learning format of the Master’s of Healthcare Innovation enables students from across the U.S. and around the world to have access to the program. MHI also offers three on-campus immersion sessions to provide personal interaction among students. The final immersion session will include a community forum with healthcare leaders. The program can be completed in 18 months or accelerated to 12 months if students attend summer session.
The Master of Healthcare Innovation Program offers an additional experience to students not available in other graduate programs. Students will have the opportunity to work with ASU Technopolis on their 6-credit directed study. Technopolis, a unit of the ASU Office of the Vice President of Research and Economic Affairs, helps to educate, coach and connect innovators and entrepreneurs through its mentoring program. Students will work with Technopolis instructors to obtain the knowledge to build their ventures into successful enterprises depending on their directed study subject choice.
Diverse Faculty Experience
Kathy Malloch (PhD, MBA, RN, FAAN) is director of the Master of Healthcare Innovation Program and brings exceptional skills and 35 years of nursing expertise to the assignment. Dr. Malloch is a nationally recognized expert in healthcare leadership and the development of effective evidence-based processes and systems for patient care.
“Healthcare faces challenges to patient care safety, medical errors, new technology, workload management, and patient throughput,” Dr. Malloch said. “This healthcare leadership program puts economic value to healthcare work, instills an innovative spirit, and takes healthcare to a higher-level in a new age marketplace of high knowledge.”
The MHI faculty also includes Tim Porter-O’Grady (EdD, APRN, FAAN). Dr. Porter-O’Grady has been in healthcare for 36 years in roles from staff nurse to senior executive in a variety of settings. He is currently senior partner in an international healthcare consulting firm specializing in health futures, organizational innovation, conflict and change, and health service delivery models. Dr. Porter-O’Grady has published extensively in healthcare with 15 books to his credit. He has consulted internationally with more than 900 institutions and has lectured in nearly 2,000 settings worldwide.
“I am intrigued by the opportunity that the Master of Healthcare Innovation Program represents,” Dr. Porter-O’Grady stated. “Our traditional healthcare programs aren’t working and this innovative educational venture will help to provide a different generation of leaders.”
In addition to Drs. Malloch and Porter-O’Grady, ASU College of Nursing Dean Melnyk (PhD, RN, CPNP, NPP, FAAN, FNAP) and Ellen Fineout-Overholt (PhD, RN), two of the foremost national experts in evidence-based practice and system wide change to it, also will serve as lead faculty for the Evidence-Based Innovation Course in the program.
Other faculty members include Barbara Brewer (PhD, RN), Renee McLeod (DNSc, APRN, CPNP), Marianne LeGreco (MA), Hugh Downs School of Human Communication; Eugene Schneller (PhD), School of Health Management & Policy; Kathy Scott (PhD, RN), Sandra Davidson (MS, RN), and Dan O’Neill (BS), ASU Technopolis entrepreneurial coach. O’Neill co-founded a software development company and has taught several hundred aspiring entrepreneurs from the U.S., Europe, and Australia.
Dr. McLeod has been instrumental in constructing the MHI program curriculum since she joined the ASU nursing faculty as Director, Office of Translational Technology and Clinical Professor. ”The opportunity to help create this type of leading-edge graduate program is a major reason that I decided to join ASU,” Dr. McLeod said. “MHI is a once-in-a-career opportunity for its developers, future graduates, and the healthcare system.”
More information or contact Dr. Malloch at Kathy.Malloch@asu.edu.
Arizona State University College of Nursing Profile
The Arizona State University College of Nursing has 1,700 students in its Bachelor, Master’s and Doctor of Science nursing degree programs and more than 7,000 alumni. The College of Nursing also has one of the five research centers for evidence-based practice at U.S. colleges of nursing.
