Description

A central concept of performance is the cost efficiency of healthcare institutions, i.e. whether they could have produced the same services at a lower cost. Understanding the efficiency and cost structure of health care service production form the basis of payments to the providers. The course aims at introducing the student to advanced analyses of efficiency variation in service production, with particular emphasis on healthcare providers such as hospitals. The course will show how the basic concepts of the microeconomic theory of production are made applicable to empirical analysis of healthcare production. The course aims at introducing healthcare system financing, alternative payment schemes, cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses, and the methods and tools that are used in performance analysis in practice.

Program

MBA

Objectives

• At the end of the course, students should acquire all the following knowledge: • Understand cost classifications encompassing fixed and variable costs. • Comprehend the methods and approaches for cost allocation. • The foundations and scope of cost and efficiency analyses. • Costing and pricing methods in service industry. • What information that are needed to do efficiency analyses. • Empirical methods that are in use in this area. • Production theory, incl. cost functions, efficiency and productivity concepts. • Statistical tools for analyzing costs, productivity and efficiency. • Empirical productivity analyses of hospital data. • Understand the basis of cost and efficiency analysis of health care institutions. • Calculate efficiency and cost estimates based on provider data. • Discuss the relevance and limitations of empirical efficiency and performance measures.