Long term care: an essential element of health administration education.

Long-term care represents a career opportunity of choice for many healthcare executives and an education essential for the comprehensive management responsibilities of many others. Yet formal educational programs for health administrators include little academic attention to long-term care. This paper reports on an examination of the curricula and courses of undergraduate health administration educational programs certified or recognized by the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA) and graduate programs accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Health Management Education (CAHME). The results show that long-term care plays a minor role in the curriculum for most university programs in health administration, that there are few students enrolled in long-term care concentration or certificate offerings, and that courses in long-term care vary widely in their content and focus. We suggest that university health administration programs include specific training about long-term care services in their established core health management educational requirements so that all students in health management programs receive at least a basic education about long-term care.