Teaching economics in the graduate health administration curriculum: a mini-case simulation approach

Training in the discipline of economics has long been recognized as an important component of the curriculum in graduate health administration (GHA) education. Yet economics is a subject that is often considered hard to teach and difficult for students to learn. What is missing is a body of literature that identifies methods that are most appropriate for teaching economics to graduate students aspiring to be health care managers. Moreover, given the keen interest in developing competency-based curricula today, what is also needed is empirical evidence, which systematically links the key skills, knowledge, and abilities economics courses try to develop with the teaching approaches best suited to do so. This paper helps fill this gap in the literature by describing and evaluating the author's "Top of the News" (TOTN) mini-case simulation series piloted in her Health Care Economics course in the Master of Health Administration (MHA) curriculum at Saint Louis University during the spring semester of 2002. This approach combines elements of the case study and simulation methods used by others, but adds several innovations. Although the TOTN method was designed specifically for a course in health care economics, it is one that can be readily adapted for courses across the GHA curriculum. The article concludes that although the TOTN exercises proved to be fairly successful, GHA faculty and practitioners concerned about preparing today's students to meet tomorrow's health care leadership challenges need to not only identify effective teaching methods, but also have a lot more to discover about the learning styles of the students they teach.