Course Description:
This course introduces the key concepts, tools, and principles of strategy formulation and competitive analysis. It is concerned with managerial decisions and actions that affect the performance and survival of public health organizations. it is focused on the information, analyses, organizational processes, and skills and business judgment managers must use to devise strategies, position their businesses, define firm boundaries and maximize long-term success in the face of uncertainty and competition, especially in a dynamic environment such as healthcare services.
On the other side, commissioning is a complex and challenging process, requiring commissioners to adopt a proactive, strategic role in planning, designing and implementing health care services required. Purchasing mechanisms such as commissioning (also known as strategic purchasing), aims to ensure that health care services provided effectively, cost effectively, and meet population health needs. The commissioner has to decide which services should be purchased, who should provide them and how they should be paid for.
Strategic Management is an integrative and interdisciplinary course. It assumes a broad view of the environment that includes service consumers, suppliers, competitors, technology, the economy, capital markets, government, and global forces and views the external environment as dynamic and characterized by uncertainty. In studying strategy, the course draws together and builds on all the ideas, concepts, and theories from other courses such as Accounting, Economics, Finance, Marketing, Organizational Behaviours, Human Resources, Planning, and Statistics.
The course takes a general management perspective, viewing the firm as a whole, and examining how policies in each functional area are integrated into an overall competitive strategy. The key strategic business decisions of concern in this course involve choosing competitive strategies, creating competitive advantages, taking advantage of external opportunities, securing and defending sustainable market positions, and allocating critical resources over long periods. Decisions such as these can only be made effectively by viewing a firm holistically, and over the long term.
Therefore, strategic management and commissioning course demonstrates a set of related activities to assess the health care needs of a population, identify health care services required to meet those needs within a strategic framework, provide those services, and evaluate the health outcomes.
This course provides health care managers with the knowledge and skills required to understand the key political and strategic issues involved, and to carry out high quality, evidence based commissioning for health and social care. It also provides both a theoretical background and practical skills of core commissioning concepts, theories and techniques.
Students' Performance Objectives:
On completion of this course candidates will be able to:
1) Explain the key concept and principles of strategic management and differentiate among the three main levels of strategy.
2) Outline the major components of the strategic management process.
3) Acquire a set of useful analytical skills, tools and techniques for analysing a company strategically,
4) Apply theories and models of strategic management on health and related health services.
5) Allocate effectively health care resources: material, financial and human resources.
6) Contribute effectively to strategy formulation, implementation and evaluation in health care organizations.
7) Describe broader commissioning process and policy context to assess community health care needs.
8) Respond strategically to the health care needs of the community.
9) Lead effectively in collaborative commissioning contexts and evaluate health care services that lead to predetermined health and social outcomes.
10) Improve best practices with regard to leading and commissioning.
11) Develop a range of skills that support effective commissioning role for health care managers, practitioners and commissioners in a rapidly changing environment.
