I’m glad the election is over! And not just because I live in Ohio where election ads ran almost nonstop for the weeks running up to November 6. Now that health care reform appears to be here to stay, what does that mean for our teaching?
With all the talk about the need for our elected officials to work across the aisle, educating our students increasingly calls for us to work across our own aisle, that of health care management and health care policy!
When I began teaching at Ohio State, I was fortunate to have another new assistant professor, Sandra Tanenbaum, begin that same year. (I was also fortunate that Sandy was a woman because we were also the first women faculty in the division; but that’s another story). With a PhD in Political Science, Sandy did policy, while my doctoral training in Operations Management made me a management person. Our teaching and research worlds were fairly separate, and the conventional management vs. policy dichotomy described us quite well. Over recent years, things have started to change. Topics such as pay-for-performance interested both of us, and made its way into the health policy and the quality management classes. This trend will continue. Topics such as population health, health insurance exchanges, and health information exchanges force us to “cross the aisle” much more in our teaching and our scholarship.
As you consider what the election results mean for your own teaching and for your program, remember the many resources that AUPHA offers. We are the only organization solely dedicated to supporting health care administration faculty! Plan to attend the 2013 Annual Meeting to connect with colleagues who can share knowledge and best practices. Use the Network to tell us what you are doing differently and to ask questions of other faculty. The many other resources and services are AUPHA are here to help us all become better educators.