Difference between Healthcare Admin and Public Health for teaching

I was looking at my credits and have:
From UF
PHA 5270 - Law, Healthcare, and Patient Safety
PHA 5272 – Risk Management & Liability
PHA 5271 - Introduction to Health Care Risk Management, Quality Improvement & Compliance

From NCU
PUB5006 - Public Health Administration
HCA5012 - Heath Care Financial Management

Would these qualify me to teach Healthcare Admin and Public Health (with one more class to get 18 credits)? The two are so closely related I thought I would ask the experts here. If I were to take another class should it be a Public Healthcare prefix or Healthcare Admin prefix or doesn't it matter? If I make any plans should I just take two classes with a Public Healthcare prefix such as PHC so all the prefixes are similar?

I am not really planning on it now but some "corporate shake-ups" may impact me and I am just looking to position myself to be an adjunct that can teach four subjects with the academic credentials and real-world experience.

 

As usual, it would depend on the school but from my exposure to the fields I am going to say "NO" - they are not really even close to being related topics. HCA programs are more focused on the administration subjects of healthcare entities while PH is focused more on things like community health, disease prevention and epidemiology. There would undoubtedly be crossover between the two fields, so you just need to find a school that is flexible on the prefixes.

 

I agree with Truckie and I'm guessing that , in general, a person with an MPH will wind up doing a very different kind of job than someone with a Masters in Helthcare Administration.

 

I have to agree. When deciding between pursuing an MHA vs MPH I did a lot of research. The MHA focuses on private healthcare entities ie: hospitals, physician offices, healthcare service companies, insurance companies etc. The MPH will focus on public entities such as public health departments, global health issues (think CDC) and research. I'm not into research and my experience has been hospital and insurance based. As such I chose the MHA. I'm currently teaching in an AS healthcare management program and once I finish my MHA in a few months I have been offered adjunct positions teaching in BS level healthcare management programs. I plan to add a healthcare informatics certificate so I can also teach in healthcare informatics which works in some of my previous work experience and my other area of teaching which is medical coding. Knowing some of your background you may want to think about healthcare informatics since that is a huge area right now. The MHA and informatics seems to work together better than an MPH and informatics would. I would say stick with what you like, if you are public health and research focused then go with the MPH course route. I will also say that you will have more competition as there are a lot of MPH programs producing a lot of grads that will be looking for work! Good luck!

 

Thanks for the feedback. I am taking an additional Public Heath class now so I will have 18 credits. I will then be qualified to teach management, IT, marketing, and public health. I realized that I enjoy public health (and my experiences have been mostly public health related even though I work in the corporate sector) more then the healthcare admin side even though I also worked in a hospital for a few years.