Jody R. Rogers, LTC, Ph.D. Program Director
The U.S. Army-Baylor University Graduate Program in Healthcare Administration (the Army-Baylor Program) recently completed its 50th year of "Scholarship in Action" at the Opening/Closing Ceremony on 26 June 1998.
Started in 1947 as a three week course of instruction culminating in the awarding of Certificates of Training in Hospital Administration, the course has grown into what has become the only Federal program awarding a Masters Degree in Healthcare Administration. Students from the class of 1996-98 conducted research which has culminated in the following history of the Army-Baylor Program. This history is just the beginning of a project I hope will lead to a comprehensive history of the Army-Baylor Program. Besides my involvement in this effort, several faculty and students have played a major role researching information. Drs. Finstuen and Mangelsdorff provided faculty oversight to the following students; Major Tim Swingle, USA, MS; Major Roger Rudolph, USA, MS; Captain Noel Carden, USA, MS; Major Patricia Hughes, USAF, NC; CAPT Robert Edwards, USAF, MSC; CAPT Colleen McGowan, USAF, MSC; LCDR Steven Wyrsch, USN, MSC; LT Glendon Diehl, USN, MSC; LT Douglas Thomas, USN, MSC; LT Michial Warrington, USN, MSC; and LTJG Karen Leahy, USN, MSC.
The years following World War II represent a period of monumental reorganization across the Army, Air Force, and Navy, especially in military medicine. As a result, health care personnel would be challenged to develop the administrative skills required to support the medical staff while they focused on direct patient care.
Brigadier General Joseph I. Martin, MC, USA had returned home from World War II with strong convictions about the needs of the Army Medical Department, with respect to education and training. General Martin had witnessed the need for trained personnel who could relieve physicians of administrative functions, such as resource management. As Commandant of the Medical Field Service School (MFSS) at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, Brigadier General Martin recommended to the Surgeon General that a suitable officer be selected for a degree program in Hospital Administration This officer would then be assigned to MESS to start a similar program for the Army.
In 1946, Lieutenant Colonel James T. Richards, MSC, USA was selected for a one-year in-resident course at Northwestern University. As one of seven university programs in existence at that time, Northwestern's program had been established by Dr. Malcom T. MacEachern, M.D., Executive Director of the American College of Surgeons who later was recognized as "the Father of Modern Hospital Administration." Upon completion of Northwestern's 5 academic requirements for a Master of Science Degree in Hospital Administration, Colonel Richards was assigned to the MESS as the Director, Department of Administration thus becoming the first Army Medical Service Corps officer to head a faculty department. His challenge was to initiate a program in hospital administration by developing a curriculum which would include subjects essential to hospital executives.
Using Dr. MacEachern's program as a framework, the program was refined and redirected to suit a military setting. Initial program decisions were made with the understanding that student critiques would be used to fine tune the curriculum further down the road. Thus, while the program was initially conceived as a three-week certificate of training program in 1947, due to the large volume of educational material, it was expanded to a 20 week training course just one year later. By 1949 it was again lengthened to 39 weeks. During these initial years of the program, Army officers were able to receive undergraduate college credit through the United States Armed Forces Institute (USAFI) and the University of Maryland.
Colonel Richards, (a prior student of Dr. Kemp's) had been working diligently with Hardy Kemp, M.D., Dean of the Graduate School at Baylor University School of Medicine. Their goal was to affiliate the Army hospital administration program with Baylor University. After presenting the joint venture opportunity to Dean Wilbur Gooch and the Graduate School Faculty Board, both from the Waco Campus, Colonel Richards was notified that the Baylor president would support the affiliation process. Unfortunately, convincing the Department of Defense of the merits of this affiliation was much more difficult. As with all new endeavors in the Army which were too "entrepreneurial" in nature at that time getting approval from the Chain of Command proved to be a daunting task. It was only through Colonel Richards' intense perseverance and tenacity that the concept of a Masters program was given birth.
Thus, in 1951 the MESS hospital administration program became affiliated with the Graduate School of Baylor University. The program is currently fully accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Education for Health Services Administration as well as being accredited as part of Baylor University through the Southern Association of Colleges and Universities. Not only is it the only graduate program of healthcare administration in the Federal system, it is also one of the premier programs in the country.
The first graduates of the affiliated program received Master's degrees on 29 May 1953 at the Baylor Campus in Waco, Texas. The two degrees offered at that time included a Master of Hospital Administration and a Master of Science in Hospital Administration (the former involving a year long residency).
Since its inception, 1,898 students have graduated from the Army-Baylor Program. The Army-Baylor Program has graduates in every state in the United States and internationally in Canada, Taiwan, Peru, Pakistan, India, Colombia, Iran, Egypt, Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Jordan, Chile, Cambodia, Korea, Formosa, Ethiopia, Brazil, and Venezuela. Today the Army-Baylor Program includes a 54 week didactic phase at the US Army Medical Department Center and School, followed by a 52 week residency program, during which students apply the knowledge obtained in the didactic phase to health care organizations. Faculty members are carefully selected from other services and more than 1,000 teachers at the US Army Medical Department Center and School, the largest single source of trained health management power in the world.
One of the more interesting aspects of this history project is the historical timeline the students produced as part of their work. This timeline helps to pull together all the significant events that have impacted the Army- Baylor Program. Please let us know if you know of an event which warrants inclusion in this timeline. The Army-Baylor timeline is included in the back of this document.
Diversity has always been a hallmark of the Army-Baylor Program, where men and women from different services, countries and specialties unite to learn about the latest topics in health care administration. The Army-Baylor Program mirrored the services in its growing complement of female students in the 1950's. Professional opportunities for women in the military flourished at this time, with the first female Air Force physician commissioned in 1951 and with the Navy breaking gender barriers to include members of the Women's Specialist Section to join the Medical Service Corps. Baylor also recognized a series of female firsts during this time, where two Army Nurse Corps officers graduated with degrees from the new two-year program affiliated with Baylor University. Women and men achieved parity in military medicine at a time when such equality was not mirrored in society.
International students brought a unique flavor to the program during the period of heightened conflicts throughout the world in the 1950's and 1960's. These students spanned the globe as was mentioned earlier.
While the course was initially developed to educate senior Army Medical Administrators, the focus changed in the 1950's to address hospital administration topics in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Veteran's Administration. Responsive to the needs of military medicine, the Army Baylor Program changed its curriculum in 1966 to reflect the need to prepare middle managers for the changes in providing health care in the federal sector. New demands were placed on health care administrators with the implementation of the Dependent's Medical Care Act of 1956. This act defined eligible beneficiaries in the Military Health Services System (MHSS) and ensured dependents of active duty members would be provided care from civilian sources at government expense. This act also broke down service-specific barriers to encourage cross-utilization of military hospitals regardless of service affiliation. The Army-Baylor Program offered a unique opportunity for health care administrators from different services to abandon myopic service-specific administrative concerns and adopt a broader understanding of how to manage a federal health system.
A joint service theme pervades the federal health services system in the 1990's as it attempts to provide cost effective and quality care to beneficiaries in an environment of depleted resources. Service boundaries are deteriorating as evidenced by the increasing number of resource sharing agreements between the Department of Veteran's Affairs (DVA) and the Department of Defense (DOD). In 1993, the Army and Air Force integrated personnel for the first time to provide peacetime health care in a Joint Medical Care Facility at Landstuhl, Germany. The Defense Authorization Act of 1994 continued this joint-service trend when it inaugurated TRICARE, a system of managed care networks aimed at providing quality health care settings. Fortunately, the Army-Baylor curriculum continues to evolve as the health care landscape changes in both the civilian and military health care arenas.
One of the more significant changes to the Army-Baylor Program involved the change in size of classes over the past 5 years. Since the mid-1970's class size numbered about 35 students mostly Army Medical Service Corps Officers. Very few Navy or Air Force personnel, nurses or physicians attended the Army-Baylor Program. In the early 1990's, the Army-Baylor Program's vision began to change to reflect the importance of jointness in training and in service. As a result, class size increased to the mid-fifties as more Navy, Air Force, and DVA personnel were enrolled. In addition, more physicians, nurses, and other clinicians began to attend the Army-Baylor Program.
The Army-Baylor Program capitalizes on the strength of its diverse class structure to address pressing issues in health care. This Program fosters a cooperative spirit where physicians, nurses, aviators, engineers, information systems managers, dietitians, and administrators share perspectives on health care problems and solutions. This environment encourages health care providers in various specialties to understand one another as they try to tackle health care issues together. Emphasis on student diversity is one of the Army-Baylor Program's strongest marketing factors and a source of great envy from other health care administration programs across the nation. The Graduate Program in Healthcare Administration is a two year program divided evenly between a didactic year and a residency year. Students take 60 credit hours of instruction during the didactic year covering a wide range of health care topics to include economics, financial management, strategic management, decision making, international health, bioethics, health care law, organizational theory, information management, and medical readiness to name but a few courses. Of the thirteen faculty who teach regularly in the Program, eleven have doctorate degrees. Several other adjunct (part-time) faculty also have doctorate degrees. Other than the medical readiness course, the courses offered are the same that would be taught in civilian programs within the United States.
The value of any degree can be judged by what the Program's alumni have done in the years after the degree was obtained. Baylor alumni have held a multitude of important and influential jobs in and out of the military. The vast majority of hospital Deputy Commanders for Administration/Chiefs of Staff are Baylor Alumni. For Army Officers, those wanting to become a 70A and/or request a future assignment as a Deputy Commander for Administration, the Baylor program should be in your future. One of the criteria for becoming a 70A within the Army is the requirement to have an advanced degree from an ACHESA accredited Program. The Baylor degree meets this criteria very well.
The intense curriculum continues to produce prominent members of the health care management community. For example, among the score of noteworthy Baylor Alumni is Army Colonel (Ret) Jack Lanier, class of 1970, who, in addition to being the Army-Baylor Program Director from 1977-81, served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs from 1990 to 1993 and is currently the Director of Virginia Commonwealth University's Medical College Master of Public Health program. Mr. Jose Coronado, FACHE, Department of Veterans Affairs, graduated in 1973, and is presently the Director of the South Texas Veterans Health Care System. Additionally, Air Force Major General Wyrick became the first two-star Medical Service Corps officer and the Deputy Surgeon General. Major General Wyrick is scheduled to speak at the closing ceremonies for the Baylor Class of 1998 on 27 June 1997. Chi-Hsu Tsou is the Director of the Veterans General Hospital of Taiwan. Brigadier General Donald Wagner was the first U.S. Air Force Medical Service Corps General Officer. The Honorable Gerald Geringer is a State Representative in Kansas. Donald Callaghan established the first Healthcare Administration (HCA) Program at the University of Houston while Chuck Eveland established the first HCA program at Arizona State University. Major General Richard Cameron was the last Commanding General of Health Services Command. Several graduates of the program such as Colonel Melvin Modderman (Ret), Lieutenant Colonel Jody Rogers, and Michael Ciccocioppo have also held positions on the Council of Regents of the American College of Healthcare Administrators.
The US Army-Baylor University Graduate Program in Health Care Administration is currently under the direction of LTC Jody R. Rogers, USA, MS, MHA, MSBA, Ph.D., FACHE. A complete listing of all the Program Directors is included in the back of this document. As the Army-Baylor Program celebrates its 50th anniversary, all alumni and staff can proudly look back on the accomplishments achieved during the past 50 years and look forward to the next 50 years with pride.
Prospective students must meet the requirements of Baylor University and be selected by a Long Term Civilian Training Board. Officers interested in attending the U.S. Army-Baylor University Graduate Program in Healthcare Administration or in obtaining additional information should call Rene Pryor at 210/221-6443.
To view list of Program Directors.