Drury program aimed at fostering health execs

Steve Edwards: Collaborating with former competitor has been rewarding.

Dr. Julia Flax: A medical education offers little preparation for administrative challenges.

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When Dr. Julia Flax learned about the Master of Health Administration program at Drury University, she knew exactly what she would do.

Flax, a family medicine physician and the chief population health officer at CoxHealth, is the first student accepted into the program, which will kick off in the 2025-26 academic year.

“I’ve been wanting to do something like this,” said Flax, noting she had eyeballed both MHA and MBA programs now that her children are grown and she has time to pursue an additional degree. “Because of Drury’s reputation and who was involved in it, I was so excited at the possibility I could enroll.”

The program is the project of two people with a combined seven decades of experience as health care executives: Jay Guffey, retired chief operating officer of Mercy Springfield Communities, and Steve Edwards, retired president and CEO of CoxHealth and a longtime member of Drury’s Board of Trustees.

CoxHealth, Mercy and Burrell Behavioral Health have all provided financial backing for the program, according to Edwards, who did not specify the institutions’ level of buy-in.

Flax, who worked with Edwards at CoxHealth, earned an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Stanford University and her medical doctorate from the University of Missouri School of Medicine. But, according to Flax, there is always more to learn.

“Medical school offered very science-based training, and I learned a lot about diseases and illness, but they didn’t teach us how to read balance sheets, communicate effectively, build and manage teams or do process improvement projects,” she said.

Edwards said Flax is exactly the type of student the program was designed for.

“I believe that the biggest proportion of our students might end up being physicians,” he said. “The smart health care systems realize the talent they have in physicians in terms of intelligence and knowledge, but they’re often not trained on the business side. This is a way to get the people closest to the work the background they need to lead.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that overall employment in health care will outpace the average for all occupations from 2023 to 2033, with an average of 1.9 million openings projected each year. In 2023, BLS reported the median salary for a medical and health services manager to be $101,340 per year, with a 28% increase in the number of jobs expected by 2032.

That’s why Edwards anticipates another group of students, too – those with freshly minted bachelor’s degrees and no experience yet in the health care field.

“Think of how big health care is – 18% of our economy,” Edwards said. “Arguably, maybe 24% of all new jobs expected in the next 10 years are in health care. That’s attractive for new entrants. It’s smart to pursue a field that’s maybe the biggest and fastest-growing field in the country.”

The Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker bears this out, showing that health care spending was 17.6% of United States gross domestic product in 2023.

Edwards and Guffey will both teach within the program, and Edwards said they have recruited a number of local leaders to do the same.

That has created buzz, according to Drury Provost Beth Harville.

“The reason why we’re getting so much interest so quickly is that this program has been developed and is being taught by individuals who have spent the better part of their careers successfully leading health care systems,” she said.

Applications are still being considered for the program, and faculty have not yet been named.

Another local program
Drury’s new MHA program joins one just down the road: Missouri State University. MSU offers a two-year online master’s program and an accelerated master’s, allowing students to begin in the MHA program while still earning their bachelor’s degree. An executive master’s program is available through a contract agreement with an employer for those who are already working for a health care organization.

Jason DeBode, head of the MSU Department of Management, part of the College of Business, said the program is entirely online to provide greater flexibility for working professionals with varied schedules.

“Our online format attracts students from a wider variety of health care settings, enhancing our students’ educational experience and networking opportunities,” DeBode said by email.

The fact that the program is part of the College of Business gives MSU students an edge, he said.

“This ensures MHA graduates have the business acumen to not only lead and manage a wide range of complex health care facilities but transition to other related industries,” he said.

Drury’s program, which is a freestanding program within the DU College of Graduate Studies, will consist mainly of in-person classes, Edwards said.

“There are a lot of online programs, and it’s going to be tough to compete with them,” he said. “Our belief is you don’t learn real leadership online. You learn it with your peers in a classroom setting.”

It’s going to be important to be flexible for working leaders, Edwards said. With night classes offered 5:20-8 p.m., most will be able to get off work and arrive in time for class.

“Instead of having one class three nights a week, we’ll have three classes three nights a week for nine credit hours per semester,” he said.

Some online learning opportunities will also be in the mix, he added.

Supportive partners
Edwards said Jeff Frederick, Drury’s president since June 2024, has been extremely supportive of the program.

Support is also offered by local health institutions, with CoxHealth, Mercy and Burrell Behavioral Health each providing startup funding in exchange for seats in the program for each institution’s students. Edwards declined to share the dollar value of the agreements between each institution and the private university, but he said the pacts will populate about half of the program’s cadre of 25 students.

The agreements are one reason the program got off the ground quickly, he said, noting he posited the idea to Guffey only about a year ago.

“There’s a pipeline of students ready to go, and that gives Jay and I time to recruit outside,” he said. “I didn’t want to put Drury in a position to lose money.”

Harville said Edwards’ idea was an easy one to support.

“Hospital administration is so complex and probably growing even more complex,” she said. “As somebody moves from whatever their particular expertise is in the hospital, there are additional levels of understanding that they have to have with respect to the system as a whole in order to be really effective in leading that complex system.”

The curriculum, Harville said, covers a diverse array of topics, like health care organizational behavior, law and ethics, operations management, quality improvement and health care finance.

“If you were in accounting, you would have the financial piece, but you may not have law and policy,” she said. “On the clinical side, you might understand the quality improvement piece but not the health care marketing or finance side.”

Edwards said one difference-maker for the program is its inclusion of a class dedicated to the delivery of behavioral health. He said he has not found another program in the nation that incorporates such a class.

“That resonated with Jay and me,” he said. “In our training, we did not have a single class or even a chapter on behavioral health, and that’s probably the biggest challenge in health care right now.”

Speaking of Guffey, Edwards said the opportunity to collaborate with a former rival was one of his favorite parts of developing the new program.

Coming from different health systems, the two nevertheless often had to collaborate on problems in the community.

“I have deep respect for Jay,” he said. “He was always trying to do the right thing for the community.”

In forming the program, the two were on the same side of the table, he said.

“We probably have 70 years of experience, 60 of those competing head-to-head,” Edwards said. “It’s so great to be partners with him. We both have our war stories, and now we get to learn what happened on the other side.”