PHPS40860 Principles of Health Financing and Management

Academic Year 2021/2022

This module has two blocks: Principles of Health financing ( 6 weeks) and Principles of Health Management (6 weeks)

(1) The Health Financing component is specifically tailored to non-economists. It provides:
- an overview of the characteristics of the health industry under the lenses of a market economy;
- an introduction to the main concepts in economics (opportunity cost, equity, efficiency, scarcity);
- an introduction to the existent systems that finance health care, and how the market forces operate in each of them
- economic evaluations of Health Care programs and Impact Budget analysis
- an overview of the existent health financing systems and their performance in relation to efficiency, equity, quality of care and human resources.

(2) Principles of Management
-Introduction to the different types of organizational cultures in healthcare, leadership styles and quality of care, fragmentation of health services and the design of human-centred health services.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of the module, students will:
- Be able to identify the values, strengths, and weakness of the existents Health Financing systems
- Identify health systems performance in terms of efficiency, equity, quality and human resources
- Understand the cost of illness, the burden of disease and the economic impact of illness for patients and caregivers
-- Be able to identify tools proven to reduce wasteful health care expenditure
- Be able to understand organisational culture, leadership styles that contribute to change in complex systems
- Have deepened knowledge and understanding of human behaviour in organisations and the complexity of organisations themselves.
- Have an appreciation of the challenges inherent in large scale system change.

Indicative Module Content:

- The module structure built in three pillars: a) Understanding the Health Care Market b) Economic Evaluations of Health Care Programs and c) Principles of Management
-Health Care market: forces, demand and supply, the elasticity of demand, health care actors, power forces and tensions. How the Health Care market forces shaped some of the current Public Health challenges.
- Health Care Financing Systems: Bismarck model, Nationalised models, Private and Public -mix- models (e.g. the US). Values, pros, cons, trade-offs.
- Cost of illness: patients and family perspectives. Catastrophic illnesses.
- Economic Evaluations of Health Care Programs ( overview of the main types, and a brief introduction to modelling) (three lectures)
-Critical Appraisal of Health Economic Evaluations
- The efficiency of Health Care Systems: Wasteful expenditure, Organizational Culture and Change. The use of Clinical Guidelines and Integrated Clinical Networks to optimize the use of resources.

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Lectures

24
Specified Learning Activities

12
Autonomous Student Learning

70
Total

106
Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
The module combine group work, interactive debates, students presentations and peer-feedback assessment.
Learning is mainly through cases in which students need to apply theoretical knowledge to real-life cases.
The expectation is that students will have active participation in class. 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Examination: Written exam. Write short notes and interpretation of figures and graphs 2 hour End of Trimester Exam Yes Graded Yes

40
Assignment: Design thinking exercise Week 12 n/a Graded Yes

30
Group Project: Health Financing debate Week 6 n/a Graded No

30

Carry forward of passed components
No
 
Remediation Type Remediation Timing
In-Module Resit Prior to relevant Programme Exam Board
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Group/class feedback, post-assessment
• Online automated feedback
• Self-assessment activities

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Feedback will be provided to the group after the mid-term assignment and after the exam. Self -assessment activities and peer review activities will be done after class activities.

Name Role
Assoc Professor Mary Codd Lecturer / Co-Lecturer
Ms Ruth Mullally Lecturer / Co-Lecturer