79065 - Management Systems in Healthcare

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course student is introduced to the principles of quality management in healthcare organizations. By the end of the course, the student is able to: adopt a process perspective to quality management and improvement; understand variation in processes; examine and critique continuous improvement approaches; understand the importance of quality management in healthcare organizations; discuss and critically asses examples of implementations of lean management in healthcare; use of improvement tools; understand the role of performance measurement in continuous improvement; reconcile attempts to incremental and radical innovation in healthcare. Al termine del corso lo studente è introdotto ai principi di gestione della qualità nelle organizzazioni sanitarie. Alla fine del corso lo studente è in grado di: • adottare una prospettiva di processo alla gestione e al miglioramento della qualità • comprendere variazione nei processi • esaminare e criticare gli approcci di miglioramento continuo • comprendere l'importanza della gestione della qualità nelle organizzazioni sanitarie • discutere e valutare criticamente esempi di implementazione di lean management in sanità • usare strumenti di miglioramento della qualità • comprendere il ruolo della misurazione delle prestazioni nel processo di miglioramento continuo • conciliare i tentativi di innovazione incrementale e radicale nel settore sanitario.

Course contents

The course aims at providing students with a solid understanding of:

a)the core concepts of management control;

b)the critical tradeoffs in designing and using management control systems in health care organizations.

More specifically, the course will focus on the following key topics:

• Control problems and the control function of management
• Management control alternatives
• Financial Performance measures
• Non-financial performance measures
• Multidimensional performance frameworks in health care organizations
• Planning, budgeting and targeting in health care organizations
• Incentive systems

 

After the completion of the course, students should:

Knowledge and understanding

-be familiar with the basic logics and components of management control

-understand the role management control plays in health care organizations

 

Competence and skills

-be capable to critically analyze and assess the features of management control systems within health care organizations

-be capable to design the overall architecture of management control systems within a given organization

 

Critical judgement

-be capable to critically analyse the consequences of different control decisions

-be capable to reflect on control issues from different perspectives

 

Readings/Bibliography

Merchant, K. A & Van der Stede. W. A. (2017), Management

control systems: performance measurement, evaluation and incentives.

4th edition. Pearson

Chapters 1,2,3,7,8,9,10,11,12,16 + selected articles and papers stored in the platform "Virtuale".

Teaching methods

Frontal lectures + case analysis and discussion. Active participation is required.

Assessment methods

Attending students

Open ended questions written exam (individual-60% of the final grade);

-Case analysis report (group assignment- 40% of the final grade)

 

Non Attending students

Open ended questions written exam (individual-100% of the final grade);

Office hours

See the website of Paolo Fedele