Business economy and healthModule Business economy
Academic Year 2024/2025 - Teacher: ROSARIA ADDAMOExpected Learning Outcomes
The Course – once the fundamental economic-business institutes have been illustrated – intends to offer students the basic elements for understanding the economics of the healthcare sector, addressing not only the theoretical principles, but also – in a complementary way – the application aspects, through updated and problematic information on the issues of efficiency, effectiveness and quality in the provision of health services. It will also provide useful clarifications on the Italian and international healthcare institutional framework, always taking into account the acquisition of key concepts and basic language, typical of economic-business subjects. At the end of the course, students will be able to describe the main characteristics of the functioning of the markets, of the corporate-healthcare system and to develop analytical skills of the corporate reality in general; to identify the elements subject to economic evaluation that guide company choices; to recognize the main performance measurement tools, useful for different company purposes; to use the fundamental principles of cost analysis in relation to benefits, usefulness and effectiveness; to analyze and develop strategies for the rationalization of healthcare spending.
Course Structure
The teaching activity will be structured through frontal lessons, with the aid of concept maps and demonstrations in graphic-mathematical form of the most important economic concepts and institutes. Ample space will be given to student interventions. The teaching aids used during the lessons will always be those present in the classroom (blackboard and markers), as the graphic and mathematical-financial demonstrations carried out "live" will make it possible for more direct, participatory and aware learning on the part of the students, who will take gradually familiarity and familiarity with theorems, formulas and axial projections.
Required Prerequisites
No one, in particular.
Attendance of Lessons
Attendance is mandatory. Allowed absences must not exceed the percentage of the number of hours envisaged by the Degree Course Regulations.
Detailed Course Content
- Elements of
Economics: Choices and Constraints: the economic behavior - Exchange,
market, money – Economic systems – Theory of Production – Firm equilibrium – Production
costs – The supply curve – Elasticity and graphical analysis of supply and
demand – The various forms of market: common features and differences – The
"failures" market mechanisms and the related corrective policies.
- The
characteristics of good “health": The definition of "health"
according to the World Health Organization
– The measurement of health status – Health economics: definitions and analysis contexts – The relationships
existing between the healthcare sector and the rest of the Economy.
- The Demand in Health Care: The need for health and the demand for
healthcare services – The
differences with respect to the microeconomic model of demand – The
principal-agent model between physician and patient and the types of
information asymmetry – Moral
hazard and adverse selection, limits of healthcare insurance markets and role
of the State – Critical aspects of the question: the phenomenon of "induction" –
Problems of rationing and ethics in health.
- The Supply in
Health: Healthcare
production, supply, and market –
The production function in Health – Input, output, and outcome – The theory of
Hospitals – Applied Economics at hospitals: cost analysis – The definition and
evaluation of the product – Measurement of outcome and quality of life – The
relationship between health and economic development.
- Economics of health care companies: Characters of the healthcare market and justification of public intervention in Healthcare – The Health System: purpose, characteristics and organizational models – The principles of economy, efficiency, effectiveness and appropriateness in the activities of healthcare companies – Constituent elements and organizational system of corporate relations, internal dynamics and general accounting principles – Benchmarking in Healthcare – The E-Health and Information and Communications Technology (ICT).
Textbook Information
1. Zangrandi, A. (a cura di), Economia e management per le professioni sanitarie, Mc Graw Hill,Milano, the latest edition.
2. Sobbrio, G., Corso int. di Economia, Trischitta, the latest edition.
Course Planning
| Subjects | Text References | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Needs and goods. Public goods. Difference between business and company. Business classification. Economic Systems. The good "health" as a particular economic good of a "meritorious" type. The scarcity of resources in healthcare. | Text 1: Part I, chap. 1 Text 2: Part I, chap. 1 |
| 2 | Consumer equilibrium in healthcare. The Theory of Competitive Exchange. The Principal-Agent Model in Healthcare and the S.I.D. Roemer's law. | Text 1: Part I, chap. 1 |
| 3 | The theory of production. Production with one and two variable inputs. Isoquants and SMST. The isocost. The optimal combination of production factors. Productivity. Production costs. The company's offer. Elasticity and shifts in supply. | Text 2: Part I, chap. 3 |
| 4 | The “market” and the graphical analysis of market equilibrium. The hypotheses of excess demand and excess supply. | Text 2: Part I, chap. 4 |
| 5 | Healthcare Economics. The health systems of Western countries. Input, output and outcome in healthcare. Efficiency, effectiveness, equity and appropriateness in actions. healthcare. The problem of the so-called defensive medicine: the Balduzzi Decree and the Gelli-Bianco Law (outline). | Text 1: Part I, chaps. 1, 2, 3 |
| 6 | The economic theory of hospitals. | Text 1: Part II, chaps. 4, 5, 6 |
| 7 | The TQM. Benchmarking. E-Health and ICT in Healthcare. | Text 1: Part II, chaps. 7, 8 |
Learning Assessment
Learning Assessment Procedures
The learning assessment will take place in oral form, in the established sessions and will require the analysis and graphic demonstration of the economic theories in the programme.
Examples of frequently asked questions and / or exercises
1 – Demand and the Elasticity of Demand hypotheses.
2 – Production with a single variable input.
3 – The producer's equilibrium and the optimal point.
4 – The relationship between productivity and production costs.
5 – Market equilibrium: departure from equilibrium and its corrective measures.
6 – Market forms: perfect competition; monopoly; monopolistic competition; oligopoly; monopsony.
7 – Supply Induced Demand and the peculiar characteristics of Demand in Healthcare.
8 – Healthcare models and systems.
9 – The healthcare company in Italy: functioning and financing systems.
10 – The offer in the healthcare company.
11 – The economic theory of hospitals and unprofitable services.
12 – Benchmarking in Healthcare.
13 – Economic evaluation in healthcare (various case studies).
14 – Work Organization Models in the Company and in the Healthcare Company.
15 – E-Health and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in Healthcare.