Last week, the Yale School of Management annouced that they had joined with other leading American business schools in the Business School Alliance for Healthcare Management (BSAHCM), a collaborative organization committed to improving healthcare by fostering management education in the health sector. Other members include the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern; the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School; the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley; Harvard Business School; and the Fuqua School of Business at Duke.

“We’re thrilled to be a member of the Business School Alliance for Healthcare Management,” said Yale MBA for Executives Program Director Howard Forman, M.D. “The combined strengths of our great educational institutions will help bring needed attention to the urgent issues facing healthcare today, provide avenues for collaborative research and inquiry, and help all of us develop courses and programs to create the best-trained problem-solvers and leaders for the healthcare industry.”

The Alliance is focused on raising public awareness of the ways in which its member schools can help bring about solutions to the pressing management and leadership issues in today’s healthcare sector, through research, service, teaching, and robust healthcare management educational offerings.

Future direction and initiatives for the Alliance will be developed at a meeting to be held in the summer of 2010. Membership in the Alliance is open to healthcare management programs at top business schools that have shown a commitment to research, teaching using research-based faculty, and service in the health sector.

Given that I am seeing more potential applicants interested in focusing on healthcare, I think it’s interesting that Yale SOM is joining this alliance. While there are several strong ‘healthcare’ schools already, Yale’s focus on social entrepreunership could give it an interesting niche to play in.