The nationwide shortage of health care workers has caused Mount Vernon Nazarene University to encourage its MBA students to get involved in the health care field.
Professor Aaron Burgess, MBA program director, said many students receiving MBAs in health care are nurses, pharmacists and physicians.
“There was a job shortage before, accelerated by the pandemic because we burned out a lot of health-care workers,” Burgess said. “Aging population, the boomers, are growing older. We are having flat or negative birth rates. It’s just the perfect storm, especially in health care.”
Burgess said that during a recent visit to Boise he noticed hospitals are experiencing labor shortages as well. He said all businesses need labor, but with health care, there is a need for higher skilled workers.
Tracking patterns of need is something hospitals need to do to ensure they have a pipeline of workers when needed. Data analytics, a concentration in the MBA, can help identify trends and plan accordingly, Burgess said.
To integrate health care into the MBA program, MVNU has focused on partnerships with large-scale hospitals, such as Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ciena Healthcare, OhioHealth, Knox County Community Hospital, Avita Health System and Licking Memorial Health System. All provide tuition assistance.
“Those hospitals want, of course, to send their employees to upgrade their skillsets,” Burgess said. “We have a lot of partnerships, and many of them are in health care.”
Burgess said the dual factors of inflation and the pandemic shutdown can cause problems with worker burnout, particularly in health care.
“There is a lot of stress,” he said. “During the pandemic, people weren’t being treated for things like heart disease and diabetes as much, so are we going to see a tick up of those patients?”
MVNU has consulted key players in the business community to offer feedback about what their needs are. This input is helping MVNU train students to help area employers.
“Our accreditors want us to demonstrate that our students are gainfully employed,” said Burgess.
A slow economy is typically good for graduate school enrollment, either to upgrade skills or (hopefully) transition to a health-care career.
“Everyone needs health care all the time, oil and health care, so I think if you look at an external trend it might drive more students to our program,” he said. “This year, we graduated about 150 MBA students, which is quite a bit for a school of about 2,000. It’s our biggest program and we have a good reputation, but we are definitely not trying to be Ohio State. We try to be who we are with small classes, and our programs are now online.”
For more information or to enroll in classes, visit MVNU.edu.
