Last modified: 18 Oct 2024 13:16
This course takes an international perspective on the function and performance of health care systems. Students will learn why and how governments commonly intervene in the market for health care. Health care systems can vary in the way they raise revenue (e.g. taxation, health insurance), reimburse providers (e.g. hospitals, doctors) and offer patients choice. Students will evaluate the equity and efficiency implications of these options using real world examples and drawing on the experience of their own health care systems.
| Study Type | Postgraduate | Level | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Term | Second Term | Credit Points | 15 credits (7.5 ECTS credits) |
| Campus | Aberdeen | Sustained Study | No |
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This course will use economics and the concept of market failure to develop understanding of why and how governments intervene in the market for health care. It will consider equity and efficiency as possible objectives of health care systems, and consider how the different models of finance and provision meet these objectives. The course applies the concept of demand to the consumers of health care and examine the effects of policies such as user charges and patient choice. It introduces the student to different ways of raising revenue for the financing of health care and consider the effects of these health care financing mechanisms on efficiency and equity. The materials use the concept of supply to develop understanding of how hospitals, doctors and others respond to incentives, and how the way that we pay for them affects how much they provide and what they provide. Throughout the course, students actively learn by applying the material to their own experience of health care systems and other real world health care systems.
| Assessment Type | Summative | Weighting | 30 | |
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| Assessment Weeks | Feedback Weeks | |||
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| Assessment Type | Summative | Weighting | 70 | |
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| Knowledge Level | Thinking Skill | Outcome |
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| Assessment Type | Formative | Weighting | ||
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| Assessment Weeks | Feedback Weeks | |||
| Feedback | ||||
| Knowledge Level | Thinking Skill | Outcome |
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| Knowledge Level | Thinking Skill | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Conceptual | Apply | Apply the concepts of supply and demand to understand why markets may fail in health care |
| Conceptual | Evaluate | Identify potential policy responses to market failure and evaluate them against given criteria. |
| Conceptual | Understand | Identify the interdependencies between the different actors in the health care sector and explain how market relations are affected by agency. |
| Conceptual | Evaluate | Apply criteria of equity and efficiency in the evaluation of revenue collection mechanisms. |
| Conceptual | Evaluate | Evaluate different ways of formulating contracts for health care suppliers and the impact of the incentives these produce. |
| Conceptual | Analyse | Consider the extent of the conflict between equity and efficiency as objectives in a health care system |
| Conceptual | Evaluate | Contrast the different ways of defining equity and critique how it may be measured in practice. |
| Conceptual | Understand | Understand the difficulties of creating a competitive environment for the efficient supply of health care services. |
| Conceptual | Understand | Explain how markets work and the characteristics that help them work well. |
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