Health System Performance: International

This course reviews the financing and organization of health systems in wealthy nations with an emphasis on how to evaluate their performance. We discuss alternative perspectives for studying health systems and how much of the literature draws on selective evidence to evaluate them. Students will focus on a health system abroad of interest to them for which they can find descriptive reports and data published by the Commonwealth Fund or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). As students conduct their own research, we will discuss different approaches to the empirical analysis of health system performance in selected nations. Finally, students will assess the performance of the health system they have chosen to study by comparing it to the health system in the U.S. or another wealthy nation. Over the course of seven three-hour sessions, students will develop a deeper understanding of the extent to which available evidence supports or refutes widely shared views of different health systems.