HPM004 International Health Systems Assessment Brief

Assessment Specification 

You will write a report of 4,000 words (excluding Coursework cover sheet, references and appendices, but including in-text citations, tables and figures) that critically assesses the performance of a specific national health system, chosen by you. Your chosen country should be different from the one you analysed in the module’s group activity. 

You should: 

• Provide a brief overview of the country and its health system, outlining: its historical development; the organisation and provision of health care; its main financing and regulatory mechanisms; and key recent policy developments/reforms. Please do not include an abstract/executive summary. 

• Critically assess the system’s current performance explicitly in terms of the three performance goals (population health status, citizen satisfaction, financial risk protection) and three performance measures (efficiency, access, quality) proposed by Roberts et al. (2008). These will be covered in the taught sessions, however, you should also read Chapters 5 and 6 of this book, where they are discussed in detail.  Each goal/measure should be covered in turn, using appropriate sub-headings. NB: this performance assessment should comprise around two-thirds of the length of the entire report. 

• Briefly propose three national health policy reforms that you feel would be most effective in improving the performance of the health system. These should be justified in terms of your preceding performance assessment. A brief conclusion should also be included. In preparing your report you should: 

• draw selectively and critically on relevant literature, data and theory from multiple Academic excellence for business and professions sources (e.g. don’t rely on single country reviews). Many relevant sources of  information, including where to locate country-specific data, may be found in the  extended reading list for this module; 

• exercise critical judgement in your choice of data and indicators, selecting those that are  most relevant to the health system you are analysing (and the challenges it is facing); • use the most up-to-date data available; 

• include international comparative data wherever possible, so that the system’s performance  can be assessed within its international/regional context; 

• discuss and provide data on relevant equity and distributional issues; 

• adopt an analytical and critical approach to the issues throughout.