Course overview
Health economics is the study of how scarce healthcare resources are allocated among competing
interventions and among groups in society. This course introduces basic concepts and practical issues
faced by decision-makers at all levels in the health system in allocating scarce resources so that the
choices they make maximise health benefits to the population.
This course covers four main areas of learning:
1. An introduction to key concepts of health economics (e.g. opportunity costs), the demand for and
supply of health services, fundamentals of markets and the price mechanism with a focus on the
healthcare market;
2. An introduction to economic evaluation in healthcare, with an emphasis on identifying,
measuring, valuing and analysing health outcomes and costs.
3. This module focuses on the presentation and interpretation of the results of economic evaluation
and the use of economic evaluation to inform funding decisions
4. An overview of the organisation of health care (provision and funding). The organisation and
finance of the Australian health system will be specifically analysed and compared internationally.
Course learning outcomes
- Interpret and appropriately apply the key concepts of economics within the context of the health system
- Debate the relative merits of equity considerations in setting priorities for a health system
- Understand approaches to identify and value costs and outcomes to include in economic evaluation
- Describe major types of economic evaluation and to understand their use in the decision-making process
- Recognise and apply key steps in critically reviewing economic evaluations
- Understand and describe the main features of the Australian health system- in particular how it differs from other salient national health systems according to how services are delivered and purchased
- Write concise reports on health economic issues demonstrating sound knowledge and skills to apply analytic thinking for a scientific debate and/or problem solving