MD ID 6545 - Global Health Systems, Policy, Management and Clinical Practice

All healthcare is delivered within systems. The system might be local, state-level, regional or national. It might be private, public, for-profit or non-profit. Within each system, patients and health providers must navigate the landscape of policy, payers and regulators. At a local level, hospitals and other health facilities have their own subsystems including infrastructure, utilities, staffing, etc, which all require specialized management. Global Healthcare requires understanding these systems—their history, the political context, and some details of their functioning in order to effectively provide sustainable and ethical clinical care. The course will provide students with a framework for understanding health systems and policies including financing which underpin the provision of clinical care. Case studies will illustrate successes and failures in global health collaborations to highlight these issues and to showcase current approaches to improve care, especially in limited resource settings. Students will learn to evaluate the context in which care is provided from the macro to the micro level, including deconstructing ecosystems within healthcare, --for example, facility-based care such as surgery, networks for diagnostics including labs and radiology, and outpatient-based care and the politics and policies that support them.