Healthcare Administration Degrees

How healthcare administration programs are accredited

Healthcare Administration Accreditation Explained

Edited by Taylor Rupe, B.A. Psychology, University of Washington Seattle · B.S. Computer Science, Oregon State University

Last updated

Two bodies matter in this field and they do different jobs at different award levels. Confusing them is the most consequential mistake a reader can make here, because one of them is what hospital fellowships check and the other does not exist at the level most readers are shopping in.

The Three Things a School Can Mean by "Accredited"

All three claims below can be true of the same university at once, and only one of them is the thing that decides what you can apply for afterwards.

Institutional accreditation, CAHME accreditation and AUPHA certification compared
Type Granted by What it covers What it is worth to you
Institutional accreditation A regional or national accreditor recognized by the US Department of Education The whole university, and whether its credits and degrees are real Necessary. Every institution on this site has it, so it distinguishes nothing between them.
CAHME accreditation The Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education One named master's program, whatever letters it awards The one that fellowships and many employers actually check. Held by 103 of the 414 master's programs ranked here.
AUPHA certification The Association of University Programs in Health Administration Undergraduate programs, which CAHME does not touch at all The undergraduate equivalent in spirit, and deliberately called certification rather than accreditation.

Healthcare Administration Accreditation Does Not Exist at Bachelor's Level

CAHME operates at master's level and only at master's level. That is not an oversight or a gap waiting to be filled: undergraduate healthcare administration is served by AUPHA instead, which certifies programs against its own criteria.

The consequence is worth stating flatly because schools get it wrong in print. If an undergraduate program tells you it is CAHME-accredited, the claim is not merely unverified, it describes a category that does not exist. Nothing at that level has ever held it. That makes it one of the few questions where a reader can catch a marketing department out with certainty, and it is a reasonable proxy for how carefully the rest of their material was written.

For the 368 bachelor's programs at 364 institutions ranked on this site, accreditation therefore plays no part in the scoring, because there is no programmatic accreditation to score. The bachelor's rankings weigh completion, cost, delivery and selectivity instead, and the methodology explains why.

Certification and Accreditation Are Not the Same Word

AUPHA certifies. It does not accredit, it does not describe itself as accrediting, and the distinction is substantive rather than stylistic. Accreditation in US higher education is a recognized status granted by bodies the Department of Education and CHEA acknowledge for that purpose. Certification is a professional association's own assessment against its own criteria.

Both are worth having and they are not equivalent, which is exactly why the wording should be kept straight. Where a school states AUPHA certification on its own program page, this site records it as certification on the program card and links the page it came from. Where a site tells you a bachelor's is "AUPHA-accredited", it has blurred two things that the field itself keeps separate.

What Healthcare Administration Accreditation Is Actually For

The reason to care is specific rather than general. Postgraduate administrative fellowships, the main route into hospital leadership, are frequently restricted to graduates of CAHME-accredited programs. That restriction is applied at the point of application, which is after you have finished a two-year degree and paid for it.

103 of the 414 master's programs ranked here hold the accreditation and 311 do not. The unaccredited ones are not necessarily bad programs and some are at well-known universities, but they close that particular door, and very few of them mention it. This is the single asymmetry of information that does most damage in this field: the fact is free to check and almost never volunteered.

It is also why accreditation carries the largest weight in the master's rankings on this site, and why programs whose status could not be confirmed are excluded from that ranking rather than scored zero. Unknown is not the same as unaccredited, and treating it as such would misrepresent the scoring as much as the program.

How to Check a Program in About a Minute

  1. Take the exact program name. Accreditation is per program, so a university holding it for one master's may not hold it for another.
  2. Search CAHME's directory, which names 112 institutions. The copy used on this site was retrieved 2026-09-02; CAHME's own listing governs if they differ.
  3. Check whether it is on probation. Still accredited, but flagged. 6 institutions currently are.
  4. For a bachelor's, ask about AUPHA certification instead, and treat any mention of CAHME at that level as a red flag about the source rather than a feature of the program.

Common Questions About Healthcare Administration Accreditation

Is there such a thing as a CAHME-accredited bachelor's degree?
No, anywhere. CAHME accredits master's-level healthcare management programs only, so no undergraduate degree in the country carries it and none ever has. A school advertising a CAHME-accredited bachelor's is describing something that does not exist, which makes it a useful thing to test an admissions office on. AUPHA certifies undergraduate programs instead.
What is the difference between AUPHA certification and CAHME accreditation?
Award level and the word itself. CAHME accredits at master's level and is the only accreditor recognized for that purpose. AUPHA certifies undergraduate programs, and certification is the correct term: AUPHA does not accredit and does not claim to. Writing "AUPHA-accredited" gets the relationship wrong in a way that matters, because the two carry different weight with employers.
How many healthcare administration master's programs are accredited?
103 of the 414 ranked on this site, about 25%. CAHME's directory names 112 institutions holding accreditation. So a reader picking a program without checking has roughly a one in four chance of landing on an accredited one by accident, and the other 311 do not generally volunteer their status.
Does CAHME accreditation depend on the degree title?
No. CAHME accredits programs rather than degrees, and its criteria name MBA, MHA, MHSA, MPH, MS among the designations that qualify. An MBA-designated healthcare management program can hold it and an MHA can lack it, so checking the letters tells you nothing about accreditation status.
What does it mean if a program is on probation with CAHME?
It remains accredited but has been flagged, which is a different state from plain accreditation and worth knowing before you enroll. 6 of the 112 institutions in CAHME's current directory are in that position. This site records the distinction on the master's rankings rather than collapsing both into a single accredited badge.

Sources for This Accreditation Guide