PAM 3780

Sick Around the World? Comparing Health Care Systems Around the World

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2020-2021.

This course provides an introduction into Comparative Health Care System Analysis. Using a unifying framework, students learn how to systematically analyze the institutional and organizational setup of different health care systems around the world. The structure and performance of several health care systems is benchmarked against the US health care system.

When Offered Spring.

Prerequisites/Corequisites Prerequisite: introductory statistics (e.g. PAM 2100, PAM 2101, AEM 2100, ECON 3130, ILRST 2100, SOC 3010, or STSCI 2100).

Distribution Category (SBA-HE)

• To acquire and be able to apply graphical, quantitative and qualitative tools to analyze health care systems.
• To isolate objective arguments from value judgments and ideology. To assess why this is of particular importance when health care is.
• To use a unified framework to simplify, analyze, and evaluate health care systems against each other.
• To apply statistical analysis and the most common WHO indicators in order to benchmark the performance of health care systems. To acquire knowledge and be able to discuss the limitations, advantages and disadvantages of such statistical comparisons.
• To gain knowledge and identify the basic organizational setups of the following health care systems with their various components and interactions: US, Canada, UK, Singapore, UK, and others.
• To develop awareness of the challenges of political reform initiatives and why it is so difficult to fundamentally change existing health care systems. To be able to explain why most health care systems are unique and historically grown.
• To develop the ability how to provide constructive critique and learn how to deal with constructive critique.
• To acquire the ability to work effectively in teams.
• To express arguments and ideas in a constructive, clear and concise manner.

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