A Stairway to Health Finance Built with Books by Louis Gapenski

Abstract

What health management lacked, when I began to teach in the 1980s, was a compelling guide to finance. Lou Gapenski provided that guide. The application of financial theory and practice to healthcare is related to, but distinct from, accounting and economics. It places return on investment and cash flows at the forefront, rather than as a footnote. How to do so, and how to guide new MBA’s, MHA’s and MS’s through this process, was a real challenge. Lou Gapenski built the staircase upon which generations of graduate students ascended to become administrators, consultants and policy experts for the rapidly expanding field of health care. The 7^th edition of Understanding Health Care Financial Management was a 2015 milestone standing at the head of the many works he sent to the field (Gapenski and Pink, 2015). Rarely is an important area of educational practice so dominated by a single author. All of us who did research and teaching in the field owed a debt to him, a debt on which we did not have to pay interest since Lou generously gave his expertise freely to students and colleagues.