The Critical Challenge Project (CCP) is central to the Master of Science (ScM) in Healthcare Leadership learning experience and will become the focus of your independent study. You will identify a challenge related to your field and interests, drawing from your own experience and vision for the future. Each student works collaboratively with their peers, professional colleagues, course faculty, and advisors, integrating various perspectives across healthcare sectors into your project.

The CCP allows you to address problems in real-time and apply the knowledge and skills learned throughout the program, with emphasis on integrating healthcare, business and policy factors and collaborating across healthcare sectors. Projects should consider ethical implications and have practical applicability to the field of healthcare — taking into account multiple stakeholders and cross-sector perspectives as you develop innovative and viable solutions.

Key principles students use to define their CCPs include:

• Relevant – meaningful to the student in terms of background, interests, current job, future aspirations, and/or organization
• Consequential – project is broad enough scope to have an impact on stakeholders across the healthcare industry, including patients, providers, and payers
• Realistic – feasible and viable set of steps and expectations within the 16-month program (the overarching challenge does not need to be resolved within the program, but measurable progress toward the defined CCP must be reasonable and appropriate)
• Measurable – contains measurable outcomes of success

Sample Project Titles:

• Analyzing How an Accountable Care Organization Can Achieve Financial Sustainability Over a Five-Year Period by Applying the Triple Aim
• The Use of Telemedicine to Increase Access to Healthcare for the Residents of the Bahamas Out-Islands
• Utilizing Critical Access Hospital Infrastructure to Provide Opioid Use Disorder Services to Rural Communities
• A Proposed Alternative Care Model to Reduce Unnecessary Emergency Department Utilization in an Elderly Medicare Advantage Population
• Reducing 30-day Readmissions: Partnering with a Community Stakeholder to Meet Health Care Needs by Addressing Food Insecurity, Improving Medication Management, Medication Adherence, and Early Detection and Prevention of Chronic Diseases.
• Incubating Innovation to Transform Healthcare for All
• Raising Quality Through Culture
• Homelessness and Stabilization Unit Stays: Analyzing Current Discharge Planning Processes
• LVAD Patient Management Improvement Project
• Equity at the Intersection of Health, Housing, and Race: A Framework for Coordinated Entry

View Critical Challenge Project Examples  Download More Information