Health care MBA students, alumni visit Iberia, Morocco to learn about innovation

Offering a comprehensive approach to the business of health care and equipping students with a strong foundation in administration, the FIU Business Healthcare MBA program aims to create changemakers. The intent is for graduates of the program to become analytical experts who can reshape the health care environment around them from the C-suite.

Part of that approach includes exploring health care innovation in other countries via a summer voyage across the globe where students visit hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, innovation incubators, foundations and rural villages. This July, the group traveled to Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

“In America, we've taken various pieces of our health care system from other countries, so being able to get involved and learn from people in those countries directly involved in health care, and hearing their experiences was very eye opening,” said Jimmy Ester, a student in the program.   

A veteran and former military medic turned nurse, he is now a manager of primary care clinics in The Villages, a master-planned community in Central Florida. For Ester, the trip sparked a curiosity to learn more about how other countries parallel the U.S.’s payment systems and where he could apply these to his daily work.

“It was also interesting to learn through discussions with the administrative staff at a private hospital in Portugal, that they were owned by an insurance company,” said Ester. “I thought it was very unique and I didn't expect to see an insurance company as a primary stakeholder of a hospital in one of the countries we visited.”

Miriam Weismann, academic director of the health care MBA program, explained each trip earns participating students and alumni an advanced certificate in global health care administration. (Previous trips include China, Singapore, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, England, France and Germany.)

Marsha Joseph, a licensed nursing home administrator who graduated from the program earlier this year, currently works on the IT side of things, ensuring regulatory compliance for clients at Broward-based CSPi Technology Solutions, where many clients are in the health care industry. She joined the trip looking to share her knowledge with current students and continue her own education.

“The technology we encountered in Portugal was unlike anything I’ve seen in the U.S. during my trainings,” said Joseph of the advances demonstrated to the group. They visited health care-startup incubators and learned about product innovations that left them impressed.

Not so in Morocco, where the poor have limited access to health care, which is nearly nonexistent in desert communities that often lack wells for clean water. What little the group saw in terms of available care was “humbling,” Joseph added, even as NGOs have stepped in to help make a difference. The visitors from Florida understood that looking at the social determinants of health, including a lifestyle that for some is nomadic, remains critical to improving outcomes for members of such communities.