The Executive Fellowship in Health Law is a distance learning, intensive program taught by practicing professionals and renowned faculty  and offering information and guidance to all professionals in the healthcare industry. Faculty will be a combination of hospital attorneys, both retained and in-house, law school faculty, all with a special emphasis on practitioners with dual degrees in MHA and JD.  The Department of Health Administration currently has 20 alumni ae from its renowned Dual Degree Graduate Program in Health Care Administration and Law. The program is designed especially for independent CEO’s of small rural hospitals, medical clinicians, nursing home executives, group practice managers, nurses, pharmacists, risk managers, physicians and other interested parties who work with retained or in-house legal counsel.  The program is designed to give intensive orientation to current health care legal issues, supplemented with case studies, so that hospital administrators can better manage their own legal expenses and supervise legal consultants in an effective and cost efficient manner.   

Fellows will have access to Virginia Commonwealth University’s Blackboard system and on-line libraries; VCU has a renowned internet library for full text articles in law, medicine, and health care.   Additionally, continuing education credits may be secured. 

The program will begin with a 2 day on-campus introduction session, in June, on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University or the University of Richmond Law School.  This will be followed by on-line modules taught by renowned faculty and practitioners in the respective field of study.  Fellows will be required to address a specific health related legal issue unique to their organization and, with the approval of their organization's management and assurance that all relevant information and data remain anonymous, develop case studies  to address the legal issues.  Faculty will also use cases from current litigation. 

Positioning Health Law into Health Administration

For years, the Department of Health Administration at Virginia Commonwealth University has been the leader in graduate education, particularly executive education in health administration. The Department created in and accredited in 1949 more recently has identified these trends in healthcare education:

1. The development of "executive" training through the implementation of our professional MSHA program using on-line distance learning adapted for fulltime working professionals who are typically mid-career.

2. The resistance of adapting specialization tracks for students, but instead maintaining a generalists approach which gives students flexibility in career planning, but with a focus on teaching a "systems" approach to health care administration

3. A continued focus on the use of information technology, the Internet and system designs to help students gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace, through the use of these tools.

4. The development of a global approach to healthcare and healthcare education.

5. The need for more "cross" training of students and professionals through the use of joint degree programs such as our MHA/JD, MD/MHA, and others

6. The need for more "cross" teaching among schools within VCU and among other universities in the United States to give students a more balanced understanding of the complexities of administering health care in the United States

7. Incorporation of standards of ethics in health administration. 

8. Intensive use of our own graduates, alumni, and healthcare business partners to provide affiliate and adjunct teaching to our current students.  This further integrates practice experience and training with academic theory to develop well rounded professional students.

For these and other reasons, it was natural that the faculty of the Department along with the leadership of its current Chairman, Dr. Stephen Mick would unanimously vote to support the implementation of the Executive Fellowship in Health Law as part of the Department’s Williamson Institute for Leadership Studies. 

Tuition for the 2006 program is $5,195., this will include some instructional materials and access to Virginia Commonwealth University's libraries (both physically as well as on-line), to include access to Lexis/Nexis.  Tuition is exclusive of some books which faculty may require or highly recommend.  Additionally, fellows are responsible for their own travel, hotel and expenses for the on campus sessions. Most fellows are financially supported by their institutions.  We encourage this as it will be the institution as much as the fellow who will benefit from the implementation of a patient safety project. Program payment should be made payable to MCVF/HAD. Those wishing to reserve a spot in the upcoming 2006-2007 Fellowship should complete and return the application and CV.  The intensity of the program, coupled with the interaction of participants, requires that the class size be limited to 25 participants, thus those wishing to reserve a spot in the upcoming program should complete and return the application as soon as possible.  Applications are reviewed on a continuing basis until the class of 25 has been filled. 

The minimum hardware should include:

• Computer with a 250 MHz processor or above

• 28,800 (56K recommended) modem or broadband/DSL

• 32 MB (64 MB recommended) of RAM

• 2 GB hard drive capacity

• CD-ROM Drive

• 3.5 inch high density floppy drive

• Monitor, mouse, keyboard, sound card, and speakers (optional)

The minimum software requirements are:

• Modern Operating System (MS Windows 95/98 or NT 4.0, MacOS 8.5 or later, Linux)

• Microsoft Office 97, 98, or 2000 (including Word, Excel and PowerPoint)

• Modern Web Browser (Netscape 4.5 or later recommended)

In addition, fellows must be able to access the Internet from their personal computer.

Even though fellows have the use of a computer at the office, we strongly recommend the availability of a personal computer at home. Fellows will be instructed in the use of necessary software for coursework and communicating via the Internet (such as Blackboard) during the first on-campus session.

Overview of Teaching with Blackboard 5

Blackboard 5 is a web-based course management system. Because it is web-based, anyone with a connection to the Internet and a reasonably modern web browser can access and use Blackboard. Blackboard provides all necessary tools needed for an instructor to present material to the student without having to learn how to create web pages or do programming.

There are two basic concepts behind Blackboard. 1) Provide a set of standard web forms for the instructor to use to add content to the web site. Once the instructor enters course content to one of these forms, Blackboard creates the web pages with the content and automatically makes them available on the web. Course content can consist of just about anything, including documents created on the computer (plain text, word processing files, presentations, spreadsheets, etc.), images, links to other web sites, etc. 2) Provide a set of tools allowing students and instructors to communicate during the course term.. Again, for students and instructors to use these tools do not require knowledge of programming or web page development. These tools consist of discussion boards, virtual classrooms, and e-mail facilities. The discussion boards are where much of the interaction between students and instructors takes place. Participating in a discussion board is similar to sending e-mail, but all participants can view every message. Messages are submitted through standard web forms. Reading messages is as simple as clicking on the desired message. Virtual classrooms allow students and instructors to communicate in real time, much like internet chat rooms. The virtual classroom has the ability to show web pages during the session, and provides a variety of tools for highlighting content. One click is all it takes to start the virtual classroom. Blackboard provides facilities for students and instructors to send e-mail to everyone in the group or to selected members only. Files can be easily attached for turning in assignments or providing additional material.

Blackboard does offer a variety of other tools, including a course calendar, a course grade book, individual student and instructor web pages, and the ability to create links to external sites. None of these are necessary to provide a basic course, but they all use the same simple web-based approach as the other areas of Blackboard.

The Department offers extensive support for instructors and students participating in HAD courses through the Blackboard. All participants are given initial in-person training on the basic functions of Blackboard. For instructors, the on-going level of support depends on the level of comfort and available time the instructor has for developing the course web site. Instructors can send all of their content and requirements to the Department, preferably electronically, and the course web site will be built there; or instructors can build as much or all of the course web site they wish on their own. If support is needed at any point during the development and delivery of the course, it is available from the Department. 

For More Information:

If you are interested in more information, please visit our academic website at:  www.had.vcu.edu  and visit the Williamson Institute for Healthcare Leadership or contact Professor Karen Swisher, Director of Executive Fellowship Programs at:

Department of Health Administration
Virginia Commonwealth University
1008 East Clay Street
Richmond, Virginia  23298-0203
(804) 828-5460 (office)
(804) 828-1894 (fax)
kswisher@hsc.vcu.edu

The Executive Fellowship in Health Law Agenda, class of 2007

Faculty:            TBA