Some 20 years ago, after years of teaching corporate finance and writing related textbooks
and casebooks, I began teaching healthcare financial management in the University
of Florida’s Master of Health Administration (MHA) program. The move
prompted me to write my first healthcare finance textbook, Understanding Healthcare Financial
Management. The book was designed for use in health services administration financial
management courses in which students had taken prerequisite courses in both
accounting and corporate finance. Often, suchMHA courses are case courses, so this book
served primarily as a reference tool when working healthcare finance cases.
Later on, I expanded my healthcare finance teaching to include other courses in
traditional and executive MHA programs in which students do not have a formal educational
background in accounting or financial management. Finance courses in these programs
require a book that provides basic information on foundation topics. Furthermore,
these courses often are part of programs that contain just one healthcare finance course, so
the course must cover both accounting and financial management.
In reviewing the books available for use in such courses, I found some that were
strong in accounting and others that were strong in financial management; however, I
could not find one that gave equal emphasis to both components of healthcare finance.This
situation prompted me to write Healthcare Finance: An Introduction to Accounting and Financial
Management.