Miss Irene Papanicolas COWG.04

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Health Economics, Policy and Management. This course is not available as an outside option.

This course is intended to provide the student an orientation and overview on managing organizations within health systems. The governance, execution, information management, quality of care, and sustaining human resources will be discussed, including an examination of the uses of accounting and other forms of reporting to manage health services. This is an introductory course, appropriate for students with no formal inpatient health care management experience. The course will cover the following topics: principle responsibilities of a health care system and organizations within the system; issues and strategies for enabling health care organizations to be responsive to their environment; concepts for supporting and implementing governance decisions; strategies for performance measurement and information, and analytical activities related to planning, finance, and information needs; characteristics and development of systems to assure quality of clinical services.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars. The seminars vary in format from a debate (1 x 2 hour seminar) to case study approaches (the remaining 4 seminars).

Mock exam given after teaching session with feedback from seminar leader.

The following are some of the background readings for the course:
Julian Le Grand, The Other Invisible Hand; Woodstock: Princeton University Press, 2007, David Hunter, The Health Debate, The Policy Press, 2008., Henry Mintzberg, "Structures in 5's: A Synthesis of Research on Organization Design," Management Science, 26 (3): 322-341 (1980)., C.S. Chapman, D.J. Cooper and P. Miller (eds), Accounting, Organizations and Institutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Take home exam (100%).

 A take-home exam (100%).