Big Picture/Vision

Our team will be gathering tomorrow in Port au Prince and heading down to Leogane and Hopital Ste. Croix. After that, we'll be posting our day to day efforts/issues/problems, etc. However, before we get into the nitty gritty of our project, let's put the project in a bigger context.

Today, the health administration profession is well developed and present at hospitals throughout industrialized nations, but is almost totally lacking in developing nations and transitional nations. That is, there 4billion people are not receiving the benefits that professional health administrators can bring to health services locally.

The typical scenario for hospital administration in most of the world today remains as one clinicians rotate through the administrator’s office on an annual basis. These physician/administrators generally have minimal administrative skills and still see patients for fifty percent of their time.

The dearth of health administration professionals in the developing world is now being met with outreach efforts by American university programs. For example, the U. of Minnesota health administration program started a health administration program at the U. of Hong Kong last year, and Yale University has started their “global health initiative” by focusing on training of hospital administrators in Africa (Ethiopia, Liberia and So. Africa). New efforts at health administration training outreach by American universities is welcome news, but I believe it only goes half way toward what is needed in developing nations.

Much of what we teach in health administration in America is top heavy relative to developing world hospitals and, in some cases, isn’t even relevant. For example, it would make no sense for a U.S.-based health finance/accounting professor to teach about techniques for third-party insurance billing and accounts receivable in a developing nation. Most developing nations don’t have insurance products and hospital payments are made up front prior to the delivery of services so accounts receivable are minimal.

Hopital Ste. Croix provides an opportunity for the U. of Colorado Denver Health Administration program to immerse ourselves in a project and work with a real live case study. Such an experience will allow us to reflect on what we are and should be teaching in regards to health administration for hospitals and clinics in developing nations.

Do you think the development of an international health administration profession is a worthwhile endeavor? What are some of the potential pitfalls that we should be considering in this development?