ECC2700 - Economic issues in health and health care

Leader(s): Dr Bruce Hollingsworth

Offered

Clayton First semester 2009 (Day)

Synopsis

The nature of the commodity health care and the production of health; traditional alternative theories of demand; economics of insurance and information; behaviour of health care providers including physicians and hospitals; regulation to meet social objectives including equity and justice; hospital payment systems; the role of regulation, licensure and the professions; international comparison of health system design; the technique of using economic evaluation in health care to set priorities.

Objectives

The learning goals associated with this unit are to:

• gain an understanding of the nature of health as a produced commodity and the implications for resource allocation in health care
• identify the sources of market failure in health and health insurance and the issues involved in health system design
• apply the concepts of agency and incomplete contracts for the analysis of problems in the demand and supply of health care and the organisation of health care funding
• apply the concepts of efficiency and equity in health and to design and negotiate ways in which the funding of health care can impact on these objectives
• use the concept of net benefits to evaluate a health care intervention and present the results in both oral and written form.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 35%
Examination (2 hours): 65%

Contact hours

3 hours per week

Prerequisites

ECC1000