Health Services Management
Recomended Literature
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These are some texts and books that contributed enormous knowledge to my development as a professional in the health services management area. Some because of their important content, others because of how versatile and useful they were and some others because they showed me a different perspective when thinking about strategies to achieve solutions or goals when developing a health project or policy.
The Australian Health Care System (Duckett & Willcox, 2015)
This is a must-have book for anyone who wants to understand the Australian Healthcare System. As an international student, it is essential for me to understand what are the rules that govern the health system, its government, structure, financing, its workforce, such as its public health, among others. This book shows in a didactic and comparative way the benefits, strengths, and weaknesses of the Australian Health System. Using this book, you can understand the financing of the health system. The explanation about the role of the Government and the markets in Health Expenditure, as well as the different means of payment allow to understand the basic concepts such as Medicare, Activity Based Funding, Bulk Funding in a clear way. These concepts are fundamental, they allowed me to understand health policies and projects. It was useful to me to understand publications such as the Government Services Agreements with the different NSW LHDs and It facilitates my understanding regarding budgets and how funds are obtained for hospitals for example.
Duckett, S., & Willcox, S. (2015). The Australian health care system: Oxford University Press.
Mirror, Mirror 2017: International Comparison Reflects Flaws and Opportunities for Better U.S. Health care (Schneider, Sarnak, Squires, & Shah, 2017)
This reading as well as the Book of Duckett are treasures that overcome the barrier of time. This book compares the health systems performance in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They compared 5 Domains as Care Process, Access, Administrative Efficiency, Equity, and Health Care Outcomes through 72 indicators. Data were obtained from selected measures from OECD, WHO, Commonwealth Fund international surveys of patients and physicians, and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. The idea of ​​the book is to seek solutions for the US health system, which has the worst performance with higher expenses of all the health systems evaluated. However, in its content you can see the strengths and weaknesses of each country. This reading was necessary in different units not only in the Master of Health Services Management but also in the Master of Health Policy that I previously carried out. With this book I understood in a clear and comparative way the different ways in which each country strives to offer universal healthcare to its citizens. For example, UK is a single-payer and centralized system, Australia which has a hybrid system of payers and providers and the US with a market system.
This reading has been of capital importance because with it I was able to understand that there is no perfect health system. In addition, I understood that evaluating performance is something very subjective and depends on the chosen indicators, the quality of the data obtained and the moment of the evaluation. Evaluating performance is so complicated that it has not yet been determined exactly which are the ideal indicators, and that they are always in constant evolution.
Schneider, E. C., Sarnak, D. O., Squires, D., Shah, A., & Doty, M. M. (2017). Mirror Mirror 2017. New York: Commonwealth Fund.
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Didn’t feel heard, didn’t think I had a voice, didn’t feel safe: Gender responsive strategies for assisting women experiencing long-term and recurrent homelessness (Bullen, 2019)
This is a report by Jane Bullen for the Mercy Foundation that I was fortunate to read when I was developing the literature review for an assignment from the Social Determinants of Health Unit on a gender-sensitive outreach program for the homeless. This report seeks through literature review, previous reports, and interviews with women in chronic homeless condition, to identify and evaluate the gender sensitive strategies of homeless programs. This reading addresses the problem of homeless women from a point of view unknown to me. For example, women with homeless problems stigmatise themselves for social constructs that make them feel guilty and failed. This causes them to be late in going to government aid centres, usually after spending time with friends, family, and in a violent home. In addition, this report describes how homeless women avoid going to help services because they feel threatened by the risk of physical, verbal, or sexual violence by other homeless men with whom they must share common areas. Finally, it addresses problems related to the lack of information about these programs by women from minority communities such as CALD, or illegal people who, due to ignorance or fear, do not go to these services.
In this reading I understood that it is not enough to make health projects and policies, but also adapting them to the needs of the people to whom they are directed. Of course, this was a great lesson that allowed me to open my mind for the development of future projects. In addition, the ease navigation of the document and the examples that they place make it an attractive read as well as instructive.
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Bullen, J. (2019). Didn't feel heard didn't think I had a voice, didn't feel safe: Gender responsive Strategies for assisting women experiencing long-term and recurrent homelessness. In. Crows Nest, NSW: The Mercy Foundation.
