HGOV4100 ¨C Fundamentals of Health Care Systems

Course content

The course aims to introduce the principles of health care organization and policy in a comparative perspective, identify the key characteristics and components of health care systems, assess each health care system¡¯s strengths and weaknesses, and discuss the recent health care reform efforts in OECD countries.

Learning outcome

Knowledge

You will gain knowledge of:

• The evolutionary path of European health care systems
• Main models of health care funding, including the differences between tax based models, SHI-models and models based on voluntary insurance
• Models of health care provision, including differences between individual and institutional providers and between public and private providers
• Types of financing systems; models for prospective/retro?spective and activity based/fixed funding.
• Health care reforms over the last two decades
• National and international political economy of health governance

Skills

You will learn how to:

• Describe different health care systems
• Describe and understand risk adjustment, incentives and equity/inequity-making mechanisms
• Evaluate the performance of health care systems

General competence

You will be able to:

• Recognize the pros and cons of different health care systems
• Understand trends in health care system development
• Understand global governance of health care systems

Admission to the course

This course is only available for students at the following master programmes:

Health Economics, Policy and Management (master's two years)

European Master in Health Economics and Management (master's two years)

Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for in Studentweb.

If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures.

Overlapping courses

• 5 credits overlap with HMM4202 ¨C Structure, organization and financing of health care systems (discontinued).
• 5 credits overlap with HME4202 ¨C Structure, organization and financing of health care systems (discontinued).
• 5 credits overlap with HME4204 ¨C Health Politics and Welfare State Theories (discontinued).

Teaching

Lectures

Examination

Written examination.

Examination and grading at The Faculty of Medicine.

Examination support material

No examination support material is allowed.

Language of examination

For students at Eu-HEM: English

For students at HEPAM: The examination set will be given in English. Answers can be given in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or in English.

Grading scale

Grades are awarded on a scale from A to F, where A is the best grade and F is a fail. Read more about the grading system.

Resit an examination

For Eu-HEM students:

An EU-hem student cannot present her or himself for the examination in a course more than two times. There will be held re-sits for EU-hem students who have failed an exam or who have legitimate absence (usually illness) in January and August. If you are entitled to a re-sit you must contact the student advisor via email no longer than one week after the result of the exam has been published.

More about examinations at UiO

• Use of sources and citations
• Special exam arrangements due to individual needs
• Withdrawal from an exam
• Illness at exams / postponed exams
• Explanation of grades and appeals
• Resitting an exam
• Cheating/attempted cheating

You will find further guides and resources at the web page on examinations at UiO.