Take My SNHU Health Sciences Classes

Seven courses make up the Health Sciences core listed on the program page, and we take each of them.

HCM 340 Healthcare Delivery Systems is usually the starting point. It traces how hospitals, physician practices, post-acute care, public health and insurers fit together, how the workforce is trained and licensed, and how the Affordable Care Act and value-based programs have changed incentives.

HCM 320 Healthcare Economics applies supply and demand, elasticity, moral hazard and adverse selection to health care, and asks why prices vary so widely for the same MRI or knee replacement.

HCM 345 Healthcare Reimbursement covers how providers are paid: fee-for-service, DRGs under Medicare's inpatient prospective payment system, ambulatory payment classifications, the physician fee schedule and relative value units, capitation and bundled payments, along with claims, denials and the revenue cycle.

HCM 400 Healthcare Finance teaches financial statements, ratio analysis, budgeting, cost behavior, break-even analysis and capital decisions such as whether a hospital should buy a second CT scanner.

IHP 420 Ethical and Legal Considerations of Healthcare works through consent, confidentiality under HIPAA, malpractice, EMTALA and end-of-life cases. IHP 430 Healthcare Quality Management covers quality measurement, Lean and Six Sigma, root cause analysis and the frameworks of Donabedian and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

HCM 491 Health Sciences Capstone closes the core with a project that pulls these threads into one analysis of a real health care problem.

The course table on this page links to the help pages for each of the seven.

Many Health Sciences students work rotating shifts, so the plan starts with your calendar as well as your degree audit: which courses remain, which transfer credits SNHU accepted and which terms you can realistically enroll in.

The match is made on job history. A hospital revenue cycle manager takes HCM 345 and its DRG and denial cases; a finance analyst takes HCM 400 and its budgets; a health economist takes HCM 320; a quality director takes IHP 430; a compliance officer takes IHP 420.

Your clinical background is put to use. If you work in imaging, for example, the HCM 400 capital budget can analyze a new MRI unit, the HCM 345 assignments can follow how imaging is billed and paid and the IHP 430 project can tackle repeat scans or wait times for outpatient studies. The HCM 491 capstone then draws on an area your instructor has already seen you understand.

During each term, posts are written before every module opens, papers and spreadsheets arrive with time to look them over and a study sheet precedes any quiz you sit. Grader feedback is worked into the next assignment.

Between courses, the coordinator brings in the next writer with a short note on your department, your earlier topics and how your posts read, so nothing has to be explained twice.

Health Sciences courses here are taken by people from the administrative side of health care: a revenue cycle director who has managed coding and billing teams for a regional hospital, a finance analyst who builds departmental budgets, a health economist with a public policy background, a quality and patient safety director who leads root cause analyses, and a compliance officer who handles privacy and EMTALA questions.

Several began in clinical roles themselves, as nurses, therapists or technologists, before moving into management, so they understand how a department looks from the floor as well as from the budget office.

An editor checks every assignment against its rubric, its sources and, for finance and reimbursement work, the arithmetic.

One coordinator stays with your plan from HCM 340 to the capstone.

Reimbursement is where many Health Sciences students struggle first. HCM 345 uses a vocabulary of its own, DRGs, case mix index, APCs, RVUs, modifiers, denials and appeals, and graders expect it used precisely in cases that calculate payment.

Finance comes next. HCM 400 asks for ratios, variance analysis, break-even points and net present value, and spreadsheet errors carry through whole assignments.

Economics is the third. HCM 320 expects students to apply models such as moral hazard or price elasticity to real policy questions, and general opinions about health care costs earn little.

Quality management asks for structured method. IHP 430 graders want a fishbone diagram, a process map, run charts and a PDSA cycle, not a list of ideas.

The capstone needs all of it at once.

Most students also bring a clinical mindset that serves patients well but differs from the analytical writing these courses grade, and the 8-week terms leave little time to make that shift.

Each Health Sciences course is priced from its syllabus. HCM 345, HCM 400 and the HCM 491 capstone carry the most graded work, IHP 430 and HCM 320 sit in the middle, and HCM 340 and IHP 420 are lighter.

You choose the scope: the full core, one term, or just the courses that clash with your shifts. Allied health students often keep IHP 420, where clinical experience helps, and hand over reimbursement, finance and the capstone.

A request about ten days ahead of the term leaves time to read each course. A course already running is priced from the open module.

Quizzes, proctored exams and work drawn from real patient or employer records remain yours. Attach your degree audit to the quote request.