Learning objectives
The course aims to provide students with frameworks for interpreting the healthcare system in economic terms and understanding its dynamics and rules, with a particular focus on the role of healthcare professions.
Prerequisites
None
Course unit content
The topics explored are connected to the following points:
- The foundations of healthcare economics – interpreting the health service in economic terms. Supply and demand.
- Supply and demand in the health sector.
- The national health service and regional health services.
- Demand-side instruments – business instruments and organisational methods, patients’ partial sharing of costs and waiting lists, disease management, case management, optimisation of primary treatments, healthcare models for chronic illnesses.
- International healthcare systems – interpretation of the (Italian) National Health Service compared with health services internationally and in the USA.
Full programme
see Contents
Bibliography
Each lecture will be backed by teaching materials and reading references. The text
recommended by the teacher is the following:
Zangrandi A. (a cura di), Economia e Management per le professioni sanitarie, McGraw-Hill, Milano
Teaching methods
The methodological approach followed entails the active involvement of participants and learning outcomes starting from the application of the concepts taught. Each student will thus be required to develop his/her own project (for more details refer to assessment methods) in order to evaluate whether he/she has absorbed the economic dimension of day-to-day organisation. Students will receive support throughout the course in drawing up their own project, which will be presented by each of them to their colleagues during the last lesson of the course, which provides
a moment of learning from practice.
Assessment methods and criteria
The exam is divided in a first part consisting of the elaboration and discussion of a paper, and a second part, consisting of questions on matters of business economics and on health economics.
Other information
None