Looking over the horizon: an Internet-based international course in healthcare management

The International Course in Healthcare Management is predicated on the belief that comparative benefits can most effectively be 'taught' by enabling students to work directly with colleagues in other countries, sharing views, discussing differences, and checking understandings on how healthcare is structured and managed in different countries. The course focuses on four countries--Canada, Germany, Finland and Ireland--which offer an interesting range and mix of approaches to healthcare, and yet are sufficiently similar to ensure relative ease of understanding. The course, which is delivered and taught jointly by faculty from five participating institutions in the four countries using the Internet as the distance delivery medium, is an integral component of each institution's participating department's graduate program. The aims of the course are: to enable the participants to develop an in-depth understanding of the healthcare systems of each country; to foster a deeper understanding, through comparative analysis, of each participant's own healthcare system; and to facilitate the development of new insights into ways of addressing common concerns in healthcare management. The course is structured around a series of case studies organized under four main themes: financing and funding; delivery issues; impact of health service reforms; and evidence-based management.