Health Policy and Management (HPM)

All public health services need to be promoted through organizational social forces, and government and private sector policies and actions are the most specific organizational forces. This module aims to introduce students to basic legal concepts, the health welfare system, and management concepts related to health services. This module also provides research method courses to develop students' basic research skills on health service issues.

 

This module includes five required courses, totaling 11 credits:

 

1. Health and Social Welfare System (2 credits): This course introduces students to health and welfare systems. Welfare system mainly constitutes of social insurance, employment security, and social assistance, and health-related welfare system includes national health insurance and long-term care. Students learn to explore current social issues, and reflect on the connections between social security and public health.

 

2. Management of Health Service Organizations (2 credits): introduces management-related knowledge of medical service and health industry organizations, including quality management, strategy management, human resource management, information management and other aspects. This course also invites experts in the field of practice to give special lectures and arranges healthcare organization visits. It is hoped that students will understand important management issues related to health services through practical observation and discussions.

 

3. Law of Health Service Research (3 credits):This course introduces students to the major research methods in the field of health service, in particular the quantitative method. Students are equipped with basic knowledge and techniques of conducting research in health service, including research design, sampling, measuring, data collection, statistical analysis and report writing.

 

4. Health Insurance (2 credits): Introduce health insurance theory, basic concepts and principles of health insurance management, and explore the possible impact of health insurance management on health service performance.

 

5. Basics in Health Economics (2 credits): This is a master-level, introductory course in Health Economics that is also open to qualified undergraduate students in other fields with basic knowledge in public health and health services research. The emphasis will be on acquiring a set of different frameworks within which to explain decision-making and service delivery in healthcare market. In this course, we will cover both demand and supply sides of the healthcare sector. We will also cover basic statistical tools for health economists as well as basic concepts of program evaluation that use economics or quantitative methods.

 

After completing this module, students are expected to have basic knowledge of legal concepts, policy analysis and health service organization management. In the future, this knowledge can benefit the students if they pursue careers in the public sector as an administrative manager, the industrial sector as a manager, or in the field of health services related research.