Lucia Ferrara

Lucia Ferrara is an Associate Professor of Practice in Healthcare Management at SDA Bocconi School of Management. Since 2016 she has been a research fellow at Cergas SDA Bocconi (Centro di Ricerche sulla Gestione dell'Assistenza Sanitaria e Sociale) in the field of healthcare management.

At SDA Bocconi Lucia is the Program director of the Executive course in "Modelli di gestione dei Servizi Territoriali" (Management models of local services), of the Management program in hematology, program co-director of the Spinal Muscular Atrophy Management Lab (SMALab) and of several custom and open market education programs. Lucia has overseen and conducted numerous research, education and consulting projects with national and multinational companies in the health sector and with leadinginternational institutions (European Union).

Her research activiities focus on population health management and clinical governance, healthcare systems financing, bundled payments, process management, healthcare system evaluation and integrated care. Her current research activity addressess three research questions. The first is how to improve patient care for specific healthcare conditions, how to redesign health care services and the reform of financing mechanisms (bundled payment). The second research question focuses on the use of big data and the implications for clinical governance and PHM approaches. The third research question focuses on the evaluation of health policies at national and international level. In the last few years Lucia has   conducted national and European research projects on clinical networks (for oncology, for rare diseases, for infectious diseases), the implementation of care pathways, on chronic disease models for the management of chronic patients, the development of intermediate and transitional care, the use of big data and PHM approaches, the evaluation of healthcare policies (eg National Plan for Chronic Diseases, National HIV/AIDS Plan) and bundled payments.

Lucia is the author of numerous essays and articles on her topics of interest. Her work has been published in international peer-reviewed journals on healthcare management and integrated care  (Health Service management research - HSMR, the International Journal of Integrated care - IJIC) and national journals and books such as Mecosan, OASI, Welfare oggi, Social Policies. Her most recent contributions include those on the management of chronic diseases in Italy, the evaluation of integrated care, the management of cancer patients within care networks and bundled payments. She is a member of several international networks, including the International Foundation for Integrated care.

Lucia earned an MSc in Sociology, health and social policy from the Università di Bologna, an MSc in Health Economics and Health Policies from the Coripe Piemonte – Consortium for Research and Continuing Education in Economics,   and a PhD in Evaluation of health and social policies from the Università degli Studi di Bari.