On September 29, 2010, the Center for Health and Medical Affairs at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business was awarded a unique contract to develop a curriculum on strategy execution by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). 

The ability to effectively execute strategies is a challenge for most health care delivery organizations in the United States.  However, many other American business entities have developed execution tools that are effective and widely used.

The contract proposal was based on the successful educational approaches used both in the Health Care UST MBA and the Physician Leadership College programs of the Opus College of Business (OCB).  The project will involve a number of senior OCB faculty members led by principal investigator Dan McLaughlin, director of the Center for Health and Medical Affairs.

The primary purpose of the project is to develop an educational curriculum and delivery methodology designed to significantly improve the execution of strategies by health care delivery organizations.  The execution tools to be included in the curriculum are: Balanced scorecard and strategy maps; project management (Project Management Institute methods); the Project Management Office; business intelligence tools (data warehousing, data mining and business rules); adaptive leadership and other related change management approaches; sustainability and culture; and employee engagement.

These tools can be used to execute many organizational strategies, but can be especially effective in the spread and implementation of evidence-based clinical innovations.

The specific elements of the project are:

• Review the business and health care literature to identify individual and organizational skills needed for effective execution
• Survey selected health care systems leaders on their opinions of skills needed by their managers and their organizational culture
• Develop a preliminary curriculum of execution tools widely used in business settings that can be applied to health care delivery organizations
• Refine the curriculum based on all inputs above and develop:
  • Topics and teaching support materials
  • Delivery methodologies, including classroom, e-learning and action learning
  • A model to adjust the curriculum based on organizational characteristics and culture
  • Develop a methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum to deliver higher levels of execution 
  • Develop a plan for phase II of this project to test and refine this curriculum in a number of target organizations over multiple years (including large integrated systems, small clinics and public hospitals).

Phase I of the project is one year in duration and the optional phase II (testing the curriculum) is nine months in duration.