UIC MHA Graduate Shares What It Takes to Succeed in Healthcare Leadership

The University of Illinois Chicago’s Online Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA) program equips students with the knowledge and skills to step into leadership roles in today’s complex healthcare environment. Graduates learn to manage teams, improve systems, and ensure patients receive safe, high-quality care.

One alum who has put those skills into practice is Anthony Tardi, PharmD, MHA, now Director of Perioperative and Endoscopy Services at a leading Chicagoland academic health system. After beginning his career as a clinical pharmacy specialist, Anthony realized he wanted to pursue leadership in healthcare and broaden his impact. The UIC MHA program gave him the foundation to transition into administration and ultimately step into a director role overseeing surgical services. In this spotlight, he shares the four skills he gained from UIC’s MHA program that equipped him to lead complex healthcare operations and his advice for future students considering the MHA program.

1. Building Networks and Teamwork

Healthcare is a team sport. No one individual can be successful navigating this space alone. You need to forge and develop meaningful relationships with people from various backgrounds.

UIC’s MHA program was one of the first times I was introduced to peers working in different fields in my academic career. It helped me understand and appreciate the challenges they faced and the solutions they were pursuing.

I carry that forward in my work today, constantly leveraging the team to advance whatever initiative we are working on.

2. Strategic Planning in Healthcare

I really enjoyed HPA 505: Strategic Planning and Marketing in Healthcare. The professor would pose different problems or opportunities for us to solve as a group, challenging us to take a deep dive into various markets, understand patient needs, and determine how to structure clinical programs and build teams to meet the needs of communities. That experience taught me how to think critically and strategically in a healthcare setting.

Strategic thinking in healthcare means anticipating future challenges and aligning resources, people, and processes to deliver high-quality care while advancing organizational goals. It’s about seeing the bigger picture, making data-informed decisions, and leading with purpose in a constantly changing environment.

I’ve carried that strategic mindset throughout my career. Most recently, in my position I had the opportunity to support a strategic capital project and was able to apply much of what I learned in this course to configure the program effectively, ensuring both providers and patients were successful. In the MHA program, we spent considerable time reviewing Community Health Needs Assessments to ensure that our investment decisions were not only strategic but also deeply impactful for the communities we served.

3. Healthcare Analytics and Finance

I vacillated between pursuing an MHA and an MBA, but ultimately, my passion was in healthcare. I wanted to learn more about public policy, quality considerations, payer relations, and understand how to partner with key stakeholders such as physicians and nurses. UIC’s MHA degree was specific to healthcare, giving me a transferable skill set I could apply immediately in the workforce.

HPA 470: Quantitative Methods for Healthcare Managers helped me become comfortable with large data models and analytics, which I now use to identify inefficiencies and inform decisions across operating units. HPA 451: Healthcare Finance I and II allowed me to interpret income statements more effectively and leverage those analytical skills to spot opportunities or solve problems within my support organizations.

Overall, the MHA degree gave me the foundation to effectively lead and administer healthcare operations. As a pharmacist working outside of pharmacy for several years, I attribute much of my career advancement to the strong foundation I received through UIC.

4. Ethics in Healthcare

Healthcare moves quickly, and at the health system I work for we’re always looking to innovate and provide world-class care. One of the courses I took in the MHA program was ethics, which emphasized the importance of the four fundamental principles of healthcare ethics when evolving to provide high-quality care. You want to ensure your decisions are done responsibly, ensuring everything is safe and appropriate for patients. I always think of patient safety as my North Star, guiding me to ensure we’re minimizing risk and doing right by the patient.

Advice for Future UIC Online Master of Healthcare Administration Students

Find someone you don’t know, from an industry you don’t understand, and get to know them. Sit down with them, ask a lot of questions, and do a lot of listening. Get out of your comfort zone, and you will grow tremendously from having that conversation and forging your relationship with somebody with a skill set and experience you don’t have.

Favorite Part of UIC’s MHA Program

I loved that UIC’s MHA degree program was interactive rather than lecture-based. It felt very conversational. We would read case studies and then debate and discuss them as a team. That’s where I found most of my learning came from.

I embraced the opportunity to learn from my classmates who had such a diverse perspective on healthcare.

It was also important to me to be educated close to home. I wanted to understand what was important in healthcare in the Chicagoland area, knowing that I would ultimately be putting down roots here. Being able to stay local while also learning about regional healthcare trends gave me a unique perspective from an MHA and public health standpoint on what matters most to patients in this geography.

Note: Anthony Tardi completed the Master of Healthcare Administration program with the Executive Concentration. The degree has since been relaunched as the Online Master of Healthcare Administration (Professional Concentration). While the delivery format has changed and the curriculum has been updated, the degree remains the same.