Online Bachelor of Healthcare Administration (BHA) Degrees: Finding Top Programs
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Nursing Healthcare AdminExplore the best online bachelor’s degrees in healthcare administration (BHA), get an inside look at program curricula and cost, and see where a degree in this fast-growing field can take you after graduation.
Choosing a Bachelor’s in Healthcare Administration: Real Advice from the Field
Every program in our rankings offers a credible bachelor’s path in healthcare administration. Still, a four-year degree is a meaningful commitment, and the right program depends on factors that rankings alone don’t capture: concentration options, program format, and how well the curriculum aligns with your career goals. Our experts share what they’d look for when making this choice.
Leverage Your Clinical Experience
If you’re coming to a BHA program with a background in healthcare, it gives you a big edge. You understand how clinical decisions and staffing affect things in ways a traditional business student doesn’t. Consider leaning into a program that lets you bring your experience into your coursework rather than forcing generic study. This firsthand study helps you learn more and makes you a much more attractive candidate when looking for jobs.
Transfer Credits Save Time
Many online bachelor’s of healthcare administration programs accept a significant number of transfer credits that can cut your time to graduation considerably, especially if you’re already working in healthcare and have some college credits. And have a conversation with your HR department, because employer tuition assistance in healthcare is more common than most people realize and often goes untapped.
Program Breakdown: How Online BHAs Work
Online healthcare administration programs allow you to earn a bachelor’s degree on a more reasonable timetable, which is great for those who have full-time jobs (or even part-time jobs!) and family obligations. Due to the nature of healthcare administration, the curriculum can be completed fully online. You can attend classes synchronously (remotely at a set time) or asynchronously (remotely on your own time) and can finish the program in about four years. Let’s take a closer look at how these programs work.
Grand Canyon University
Available both online and on-campus, GCU’s online healthcare administration bachelor’s degree program is designed to be completed in four years and focuses on five specific areas:
- Communication & relationship management
- Leadership & professionalism
- Healthcare environment & business acumen
- Financial management
- Organization dynamics
Each online course lasts seven to eight weeks and students must complete 120 credit hours to graduate. However, up to 90 of these credits may be transfer credits, which can drastically reduce the time necessary to graduate. Most online students can expect to pay $470 per credit hour, although veterans (both active duty and reserve) will get a discount and pay only $250 per credit hour.
Expert Insight
Many employers also have tuition assistance programs to help cover costs for classes pertinent to your line of work.
National University
NU’s BSHA program is also an associate member of the Association of University Programs in Health Administration, also known as the AUPHA. To provide the flexibility that nontraditional students demand, NU offers most of its courses in a special four-week format. This allows students to complete their course requirements faster and fit them more easily into an already busy schedule.
To graduate, students must complete 180 quarter units. Healthcare administration students can also attend class on-campus at one of the 20 locations in California and Nevada. The program also comes with the following perks:
- No application fee
- No application essays or exams
Program requirements include the following courses:
- Cultural diversity
- Global health systems
- Healthcare terminology
- Health behavior
- Health economics
- Health informatics
- Healthcare politics & policy
- Managerial accounting fundamentals
- Organizational behavior
Online BHA FAQs: Understanding the Degree
Learning online provides maximum flexibility for those students who need it most. Each school tailors its online healthcare administration bachelor’s degree program to make it as easy as possible for students to take classes whenever, wherever, and however they want. Given the relative hands-off nature of the healthcare administration field of study, this means many online programs can be finished entirely online, with no campus visits or in-person curriculum requirements necessary.
Read our FAQ section below to learn more about the curriculum of online bachelor’s healthcare administration programs.
What are the main topics covered in an online BHA program?
Before graduation, you should expect to cover several foundational topics, regardless of which program you choose to attend or what electives you decide to take. Examples include:
- Leadership and management
- Organizational communication
- Legal and moral conflicts in healthcare
- Financial considerations of a healthcare organization
- The application of information technology
- Evidence-based healthcare services
- Healthcare policy
Some of these topics may have their own dedicated class. Others might be learned through a combination of courses. Either way, these topics will provide a comprehensive overview of how to successfully manage a healthcare organization.
Expert Insight
Try to keep an open mind when working your way through the program. There may be an area of healthcare you’ve never considered specializing in, and taking these courses may open new doors and opportunities you would have otherwise overlooked.
What are the key skills I will learn by the time I graduate?
Upon completion of an online bachelor’s program in healthcare administration, graduates can expect to be well-versed in the challenges and necessary duties that come with operating and leading a clinical or medical organization. Some of the unique skills students will have at graduation include:
- Interpersonal and mediation skills to facilitate communication and cooperation among various departments and individuals with wide-ranging talents and educational backgrounds.
- Proficiency with accounting tools to analyze financial statements, projections, and billing processes.
- The ability to recognize ethical and moral dilemmas, as well as how to either resolve them or find experts to help make the best of an unwinnable situation.
- Understanding of federal, state and local regulations and laws and how they apply to the healthcare setting.
- Take statistical and epidemiological data and apply them to an existing clinical setting to improve patient and worker outcomes.
What are some common classes I should expect to take?
Each school will create its own curriculum for an online bachelor’s degree in healthcare administration. However, there will be some common classes that most students can expect to take, regardless of which school they choose. For example, there will be classes that cover the ethics, legal issues, and financial challenges of the healthcare environment. Let’s take a look at some of these courses in more detail.
Healthcare Finance
This class is a primer for the basic concepts of accounting, budgeting, and billing within the healthcare context. Students learn how to use financial analytics to review expenditures, create management assessments, and measure productivity.
Legal & Ethical Issues in Healthcare
Students learn the fundamental principles and rules concerning laws in the healthcare realm as well as ethical principles that govern management decisions in hospitals and other healthcare settings. Students also study the guidelines that help them navigate the moral and legal dilemmas that commonly arise in a healthcare delivery setting.
Information Technology in Healthcare Administration
By taking this course, students learn the basics of information technology in healthcare-specific environments, including electronic health records, data collection platforms, analytics, and how technology can help identify workflow or population health barriers and streamline processes.
Organizational Behavior
This class examines the theories underlying how workers interact and operate within an organization. Students analyze the principles of group dynamics, human psychology, motivation, culture, politics, work environment, and technology, specifically within a business setting.
Management Principles
This course teaches students the proper and effective management of healthcare human resources. Concepts cover a range of management contexts, including recruitment, hiring, firing, training, increasing diversity, and healthcare operations.
Capstone Project
In this intensive course, students demonstrate the integration and synthesis of concepts learned in previous classes by applying them to an actual issue or concern in the healthcare industry. Capstones may incorporate written work, but they tend to be very hands-on and draw on your experiences as well as your education to-date.
What are the typical admissions requirements?
ecause the bachelor’s degree in healthcare administration is an entry-level degree, college admissions requirements typically match requirements for other bachelor’s degree programs, such as:
- Completion of an application.
- Payment of an application fee.
- Submission of academic transcripts, such as from high school or other post-secondary institutions.
- Admission exam scores, such as from the ACT or SAT.
Entry into the actual healthcare administration program may be a separate process and require completion of basic general lower-division education coursework and prerequisites with a minimum GPA. There are usually no requirements for prior experience in the clinical or healthcare field. However, such experience will be very useful when looking for post-graduate employment.
How long does it take to earn a BHA online?
Online degree programs offer tremendous flexibility in how and when a student completes coursework. Therefore, the time it takes to complete a bachelor’s degree in healthcare administration can vary greatly.
For example, a full-time student will usually be able to earn a bachelor’s degree in approximately four years of study. In contrast, a part-time student may take five or six years to complete the healthcare administration bachelor’s degree. But this longer timeline has the advantage of allowing students to continue working or take care of other personal or family responsibilities while attending school.
Accreditation & Online BHA Programs
Accreditation is the process by which an independent body reviews a school or program to confirm that it meets a basic level of education quality. At the postsecondary level, there are two primary types of accreditation: institutional and programmatic.
Institutional accreditation can be broken down into two types: regional and national.
Most schools focus on regional accreditation, where an accrediting agency has jurisdiction over a specific region of the United States. Regional accreditation is the gold standard, and is required to receive federal financial aid.
National accreditation is similar to regional accreditation, except the accrediting body can accredit any school across the country. It’s also less stringent than regional accreditation, in general.
Programmatic accreditation pertains to a specific program, such as engineering, business, or accounting. At the bachelor’s level, there is no widely recognized accrediting body for healthcare administration.
The Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education (CAHME) is an accrediting organization for healthcare administration programs, but only at the master’s degree level. Therefore, when choosing among the many online bachelor’s degree healthcare administration programs out there, you need only look for regional or national accreditation. You can review a school’s current accreditation status by visiting the Department of Education’s Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs.
How Much Does an Online BHA Cost?
When choosing an online bachelor’s degree program in healthcare administration, price matters. There are many variables that can go into the actual cost of attendance, including tuition, fees, type of school, and prior educational experience. To give you a rough idea of how much you can expect to pay, we’ve featured three online programs and their tuition costs by price per credit hour.
Need help paying for school? Learn more about your options by reading our financial aid and scholarship guides.
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