Core Courses

First term

During the first term, you are required to take the following five courses:

Foundations of Management in Healthcare Organizations

• Fundamental issues in organizational behavior and management in a healthcare environment
• Skills and competences for leadership, strategy making, human resource management, performance management
• Learning method: class discussions, roleplay, managerial games, case studies, and other active learning methods

Health Care Systems & Policy

• Major issues and analytical methods within health care systems and their policies from an international perspective
• Structure and dynamics of health care systems and analysis of major health policy issues

Health Economics

• Use of economics (demand theory, supply theory, partial and general equilibrium, macroeconomic analysis) in all aspects of health and healthcare
• Answers to these questions:
  • Why is the healthcare market regulated?
  • How can the relationship between patients and medical doctors be formalized?
  • What does equity mean?
  • Why are some healthcare systems experiencing a shortage of healthcare manpower?
  • How can efficiency and effectiveness of hospitals be measured?
  • How does the healthcare insurance market work?
  • What are the expected consequences of different ways of financing healthcare?

Issues in Public Health and Epidemiology

• Foundation and methods of modern epidemiology
• Principles of disease causation and logic of the design and interpretation of epidemiological studies
• Natural history of disease, epidemiological measures, types of epidemiological studies, screening campaigns, study design and use of questionnaires, meta-analysis and survival curves
• Interventions aimed to reduce the influence of such factors

Quantitative Methods in Healthcare Organizations

• Mathematical and statistical techniques, and models of data analysis to assess values and assumptions, and support managerial decisions in the healthcare sector
• How quantitative methods are applied, with specific focus on healthcare policy and management decisions

Evaluation: your performance in each course will be evaluated on the basis of a final exam, group work, and class participation.

Second term

The second term starts after winter break. You are required to attend three compulsory courses:

Financial Accounting

Fundamentals of financial accounting, with particular emphasis on private and public healthcare institutions. You are expected to learn the nature and purpose of financial accounting, its basic principles (among others, entity, double entry, money-measurement, going-concern), the contents of a balance sheet (assets, liabilities, and equity) and operating statements (revenues, expenses and income).

Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programs

Different tools of economic evaluation of healthcare programs. The final aim is to support decision makers in the efficient allocation of scarce resources. The main areas covered by the course are:

• Partial and complete economic evaluation analysis
• Outcomes measurement and utility assessment
• The willingness-to-pay approach
• Decision analysis

You are expected to critically read and assess economic analysis to design comparative economic studies aimed at testing the feasibility of alternative healthcare projects.

Finance for the Healthcare Sector

• The metrics of finance and financial planning for healthcare organizations
• Financing investments in the healthcare sector
• Building sound financial public-private partnership in health systems.

Evaluation: your performance in each course will be evaluated on the basis of a final exam, group work, and class participation.