Competency-based health services management education: contemporary issues and emerging challenges.

Health service executives increasingly recognize managerial competencies as an important element of contemporary health services management education and practice. This paper addresses reasons for the growing interestin the topic, provides a brief review of selected literature, and presents findings from two Delphi studies of the identification and use of competencies in health services management. The two studies reveal that there is a high level of agreement among academicians and practitioners concerning which domains of competencies are effectively addressed in health management education, but many still have concerns regarding how the competencies should be applied. The paper concludes with unresolved issues and their implications for future research.