Coursera - Understanding and Improving the US Healthcare System

Health is important to everyone. For most people, that means that understanding the healthcare system is important. As a patient or a caregiver for a loved one, your understanding of the system can mean everything from getting the right help, to economic stress in paying medical bills, to medical misadventures and even worse. And if you’re a healthcare professional (or are in training or want to be a healthcare professional someday), understanding the system is a critical – but often under-developed – part of optimizing the help you can provide your community.

Despite this importance, confident understanding of the US healthcare system is alarmingly rare. This course is designed to change that – by helping students understand the core structure and accomplishments of the system, the recurring shortcomings, and attempted remedies through policy reform. Rather than emphasizing complexity (a focus of many other courses about healthcare policy), the lessons in this course will highlight central themes that learners can take away from the course and apply to their own experiences – and other coursework – with confidence. Moreover, students who seek more advanced content will have ample opportunity to tailor their learning accordingly.

In addition, through a unique, coursewide group exercise that will serve as a keystone of this course, all learners will have the opportunity to learn how they can improve the US healthcare system. Whether as individuals, in groups, or as future architects of system reform, students in this course will enjoy a premier opportunity to understand the US healthcare system – and their options for addressing problems in the system – as they never have before.

This course was co-developed by the course director, Matthew Davis, MD, MAPP, and course producer, Michael Rubyan, MPH. Davis is a senior faculty member and longtime teacher regarding health policy at the University of Michigan Medical School, School of Public Policy, and School of Public Health. Rubyan is a doctoral student at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Course Format

Unit 1: The US Healthcare System – 4 Main Players
01.01 Introduction
01.02 Patients
01.03 Providers
01.04 Payers
01.05 Public health
01.06 Interactions
01.07 Summary of Unit 1

Unit 2: Mini-Documentaries – US Presidents and the History of US Healthcare Reform
02.01 Introduction
02.02 Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson
02.03 Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, and James E. Carter
02.04 Ronald W. Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and William J. Clinton
02.05 George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama

Unit 3: In-Depth Interviews – Private and Public Payers in the US Healthcare System
03.01 Origins and circumstances of employer-sponsored health plans (interview with Thomas Buchmueller, PhD)
03.02 Origins and circumstances of government-sponsored healthcare-oriented programs (interview with Richard Lichtenstein, PhD)
03.03 Connections between health insurance and health (interview with Helen Levy, PhD)
03.04 Emphasizing quality, with an emphasis on veterans (interview with Eve Kerr, MD, MPH)
03.05 Patients, providers, payers, and public health: the story of obesity care and prevention (interview with Susan Woolford, MD, MPH)
03.05 Emphasizing healthcare value and value-based insurance design (interview with Mark Fendrick, MD, MPH)
03.06 Addressing disparities in health, healthcare, and public health (interview with John Ayanian, MD, MPP)

Unit 4: Designing Benefits in a Health Plan – the CHAT® Simulation Exercise
04.01 Introduction to CHAT®
04.02 Interview with Susan Goold, MD, MA
04.03 The rules of CHAT®
04.04 Assignment 04-A: Designing and submitting your plan benefit choices for yourself
04.05 Assignment 04-B: Assignment to a stakeholder group; designing and submitting your plan benefit choices for your stakeholder group (instructions for this assignment will be released prior to Week 4)

Unit 5: Coursewide Discussions – Plan Benefits Design for Community Stakeholder Groups
05.01 Google Hangout A – Date/time TBA
05.02 Google Hangout B – Date/time TBA

Unit 6: Looking Toward the Future of the US Healthcare System – an Expert Panel Discussion
06.01 Panel Discussion, moderated by Dr. Davis
06.02 Course wrap-up

also You can watch my other last: Coursera-posts