Introduction to Business and Management in Health Care
Harvard Medical School
Instructors: Stan N. Finkelstein, MD; Peter L. Slavin, MD, MBA

Offered since the mid-1990s as a result of a medical student initiative, this class offers exposure to a wide range of managerial, economic, and policy issues that the physician is likely to encounter throughout an upcoming professional career. The course codirectors are both physicians who have had extensive experience with the topics and issues to be presented. One course director is a senior health care administrator and the other is an established health technology/management researcher. The 12 sessions over the semester cover a selection of the disciplines that underlie management of health institutions (economics, finance, marketing, etc.) and new biomedical enterprises. The subject material presented offers a mix of research findings and practical insights that emerge from experience in these settings.

- Economic Principles and the Health Care “Marketplace”

- Medicine vs. Health

- Managed Care in Massachusetts

- Managing Professionals: Role of Uncertainty

- Operations Improvement in a Teaching Hospital

- Cost Effectiveness and Pharmaceuticals I

- Efficiency Measurement in Managed Health Care

- Financial Accounting for Health

- Cost Efffectiveness and Pharmaceuticals II

- Analyzing Outcomes of Medication Use

- Project Presentations