International Business Graduate Shares Industry Expertise in Healthcare Management Course
HLOs: 
James Bain, a 2014 graduate of the Bachelor of Commerce – International Business program, returned to campus to deliver a guest lecture in the Bachelor of Commerce – Healthcare Management program. James, who works in the healthcare industry, joined Professor Gavin Wardle’s HCM 3001: Health Data and Analysis course to introduce students to the Ontario Hospital Management Information System (MIS) data.
James opened with the functional centre account code structure. The class learned how to organize and query the data using the Ontario government’s Healthcare Indicator Tool. The session also included hands-on practice, with students downloading and analyzing MIS datasets in Excel, focusing on facility-level trends and benchmarking unit costs, such as the cost per inpatient day for medical patients
Ontario hospitals spent $36 billion in the 2023/24 fiscal year on a range of services, from diagnostic imaging to complex organ transplants. The MIS data provide detailed insights into hospital revenues, expenses, and services, making it a vital resource for government officials, healthcare administrators, consultants, and researchers working to improve healthcare planning and resource allocation across the province.
Reflecting on the importance of MIS data, James offered advice to the Healthcare Management students: “Familiarity with MIS data and ways to analyze it is essential for today’s healthcare managers. Becoming an expert in MIS data analysis has allowed me to contribute to understanding and solving some of today’s most pressing problems in healthcare management. I would encourage all the students in the healthcare management program to learn more about MIS data and to practice the applications they learnt during my session. Knowledge of MIS data will help them throughout all stages of their careers, including by providing a useful skill to market in their applications for work-integrated learning terms.”
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