Health services management manpower and educational needs with American health reform

This paper argues that our previous health services management (HSM) manpower projections may be overly optimistic as the health networks, managed care, capitated payment, and eventually global budgetary targets become the dominant themes to implement cost restraints, universal access, and social equity. HSM programs should, therefore, focus more on their educational pursuits to produce leaders for clinical management teams, who are able to allocate scarce clinical resources. A sensible strategy for HSM programs is to develop closer ties with the schools of medicine, public health, nursing, or allied health. These cooperative efforts would be particularly beneficial in teaching 'clinical-fiscal performance methodologies' to familiarize students with such concepts as clinical benchmarking, managing quality, resource management, and continuous quality improvement (CQI).