HSM401 Reflecting on Health Care Systems (8)

CSU Discipline Area: Allied Health (ALHEA)

Duration: One session

Abstract:

Students examine the components of a health care system, building on their own experiences, to establish a personal development framework. They investigate definitions and models of health; how health, illness and disability are measured, particularly the determinants of health; how value can be measured and applied to different interventions and the impacts they have on health status; and how choices are made in resource allocation. Emerging trends linked to some complex and real issues confronting managers are considered in detail.

+ Subject Availability Modes and Locations

Session 1
Distance	Bathurst
Session 2
Distance	Bathurst

Continuing students should consult the SAL for current offering details: HSM401

Where differences exist between the Handbook and the SAL, the SAL should be taken as containing the correct subject offering details.

Enrolment restrictions:

Available only to postgraduate students in health related courses

Objectives:

Upon successful completion of this subject, students should:

be able to describe several models of health and illness
be able to identify, describe and analyse a variety of determinants of health;
be able to identify, describe and analyse a model or framework of health most applicable to the health care service they are involved with;
be able to discuss different measures of health and illness, including morbidity and mortality;
be able to identify and evaluate the principal statistics, including demographic statistics, required to measure these concepts;
be able to identify, describe and evaluate categories and examples of the typical measures currently used to assess performance at service and system levels of delivery;
be able to discuss the contribution of economic theory to the process of resource allocation in a health or aged care context;
be able to identify the role and contribution of different stakeholders to shaping the policy and delivery of health and aged care services
be able to describe the relative significance of the principal components of health care system - by volume, cost, mode of delivery, provider, funder, sector;
be able to analyse the performance of the health and aged care systems from perspectives of equity, accessibility, efficiency and accountability;
be able to describe the components and characteristics of the health workforce;
be able to evaluate the impact of gender, demographic, education, technology, economic, and industrial conditions and issues on the health workforce;
be able to analyse the effectiveness, efficiency and acceptability of current funding arrangements from a variety of stakeholder perspectives;
be able to discuss predictions of changes to funding models and the degree of acceptance from a variety of stakeholder perspectives;
be able to describe health systems developments in a number of health systems other than their own;
be able to develop an ability to reflect deeply and critically to analyse experience and new information to enhance an understanding of managerial thinking;
be able to use the approach of reflection to integrate new insights with their current understanding of health system related issues;
be able reflect on the differences in thinking between clinicians, clinician-managers and managers on conceptions of clinical work and accountability for the use of resources in a health or aged care context.

Syllabus:

The subject will cover the following topics:

health concepts and models;
demography, epidemiology and measures of health;
health economics, technology and evaluation;
health care stakeholders and policy;
institutional care;
non-institutional care;
public-private sector relationships;
the health workforce;
trends in health care financing;
trends in health care organisation;
trends in health care management.

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