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, advisors, and chairs, 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 sector. 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
• Establishment of a Minimally Invasive Program in Gynecologic Oncology Surgery in The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
• Integrated Holistic Healthcare: A Model for Community Behavioral Health
• Onboard and Upward: Developing Culture
• Redesign of Bellevue Hospital's Care Delivery Model Using Lean Management
• Strategic Plans to Implement a Cost-Effective, Reproducible and Scalable, Geriatric Care Navigation Program that Aligns Emergency Medicine Providers and Hospitals with the Quality and Value Expectations of Patients and Payers

View Critical Challenge Project Examples