Health Management in Strategic Management and Leadership  MSc

Course Content

Managers need to be strategic and think and plan ahead, they also need to be informed and inspiring leaders to achieve and deliver results. The MSc Health Management provides the strategic management and leadership capacities for careers at the highest levels of management in healthcare and organisations engaged in the healthcare sector and associated industries.

The emphasis on applied analysis of management issues is a solid foundation for a career in senior management. The focus on all-round management competence makes this a versatile qualification for a general management career path. A broad and inclusive curriculum provides all the business skills you will need in management in healthcare - strategic analysis, people management, leading and managing change, planning and setting priorities.

Course Structure

Strategic Management and Leadership

The core modules provide the base for strategic management thinking and leadership awareness. These include three key perspectives on leadership and management: leading through strategy; leading operationally and delivering the strategy; leading change for new initiatives. In addition, research methods provides essential skills in researching and finding out how to analyse and respond to diverse management challenges - a forward-looking skill that is essential for the strategic manager to make evidence-based decisions. The dissertation shows that you can independently apply the strategic management and leadership skills and insights for yourself . In addition to the dissertation there are five core modules you need to complete. These are shown below:

• Strategic management and planning
• Principles of health management
• Leading and managing change
• Introduction to research methods for evidence-based practice
• Introduction to data analysis
• Dissertation

In addition to the core modules you complete three further optional modules which you can choose from the Strategic Management options or the Planning and Health Policy options.

Optional Strategic Management modules

Quality management and evaluation are fundamental to ensuring excellence and safety in what is produced and how this is undertaken. Systems thinking is the key approach to understanding and analysing processes, organisations, healthcare systems and industries and developing insights into dynamic and complex environments. Commissioning views the management challenge from the purchaser perspective. Marketing addresses the perspective of the service provider and supplier planning market development. The placement provides a flexible opportunity to undertake work in a new setting. These modules include:

• Quality management and action evaluation of health programmes
• Healthcare systems thinking
• Effective commissioning
• Marketing in healthcare
• Elective placement

Optional Planning and Health Policy modules

These options focus on planning and priority setting and economic evaluation and health policy. This cluster has a special relevance for those wishing to develop skills in analysing and understanding the contexts of healthcare and the economic factors that shape and determine how these contexts work. You may complete up to two modules from these options:

• Economics of healthcare
• Economic evaluation of healthcare
• Advanced economic evaluation of healthcare
• Understanding the health policy process: concepts and tools
• Health systems organisation, financing and performance
• Health policy in Britain

 

Further details of these modules are as follows:

Core Modules

• Strategic management and planning - this develops higher management level abilities to analyse, formulate and implement strategy.
• Principles of health management - this introduces the key skills for operational management including leadership, working with teams, working with professional groups, working across boundaries and managing with finance.
• Leading and managing change - this addresses how to plan and lead significant organisational change within a strategic framework.
• Introduction to research methods for evidence-based practice - this includes research design and the evidence on which it is based.
• Introduction to data analysis - this includes qualitative (interview) and quantitative (survey) methods of analysing data.

Optional Strategic Management Modules

• Quality management and action evaluation of health programmes - this examines how to lead and manage quality, how to define what is produced, specify how it is produced, and plan to evaluate this.
• Healthcare systems thinking - this focuses on how to model complex operational, organisational and policy or market systems and appraise the system dynamics from an evidence-based management perspective.
• Effective commissioning - this develops skills in commissioning and specifying medical services and products as a purchaser.
• Marketing in healthcare - this examines how to develop marketing plans in medical services and supplies, pharmaceutical products, health insurance and social marketing.
• Elective placement - this provides an opportunity to complete a work-based placement in a new area of experience.

Optional Planning and Health Policy Modules

• Economics of healthcare - this develops key principles for analysing decisions by consumers, firms and governments in healthcare systems.
• Economic evaluation of healthcare - this examines how to appraise cost and effectiveness and prioritise for decisions in healthcare.
• Advanced economic evaluation of healthcare - this includes advanced techniques to appraise cost and effectiveness and prioritise for decisions in healthcare.
• Understanding the health policy process: concepts and tools - this develops insights into the methods and techniques of policy formulation and how these are articulated by policy makers in policy briefing documents.
• Health systems organisation, financing and performance - this develops skills in the comparative analysis of health systems organisation, financing and performance from a global perspective across different healthcare systems.
• Health policy in Britain - this examines the dynamics of the rapidly changing British health and social care system.

Dissertation

This is independent work undertaken with the support of an academic supervisor to generate applied insights into solving problems with a strategic, managerial or operational significance. The length is 10,000 to 15,000 words.

The right choice of dissertation topic can provide significant leverage and impetus for future career development. Areas of study include:

• Competition in the British health system
• Managed care, an appraisal of managed care models in the USA and a review of the UK experience in implementing these models
• Role of social enterprises in healthcare and the constraints that limit further development
• Health insurance in Greece and the potential for new products.
• Strategic review and business plan for an NHS Trust
• Business development plan for a new clinical facility in Dubai
• Marketing plan for medical supply imports in Turkey
• Service reconfiguration at a leading NHS trust
• Workload modelling and performance management system for a London-based secondary care provider
• A critical appraisal of health management leadership models and training in Britain.
• Professional and organisational commitment, a study of clinicians in Singapore
• Patient choice, the factors that determine choice and how to accommodate these in service delivery.

An indicative timetable for 2011-12 is available for download. The new 2012-13 timetable will be available by 1 June 2012.