HACM9207 Health and Aged Care Operations Management

Health and aged care operations management is the area of management concerned with overseeing, designing and redesigning, and controlling the processes of patient or client services. Study of this topic will develop an understanding of the methods that can be applied to health and aged care management.

This topic aims to provide students with an understanding of the quantitative methods that can be applied to health and aged care management.

1. Gain an insight into the scope of quantitative methods that can be applied by health care managers to improve productivity, quality and/or costs of health and aged care services
2. Understand the type of data that is routinely available for analysis of health and aged care systems, and how this data may be analysed using commonly available tools
3. Understand the approaches to collecting new data in order to investigate and manage problems that cannot be addressed using routinely available administrative data
4. Understand decision-making in health and aged care, including under uncertainty
5. Understand some of the quantitative methods that can be specifically applied to forecasting, queuing and capacity planning and how these are important when dealing with reforms such as National performance targets
6. Appreciate what systems thinking, design thinking, lean thinking and quantitative methods may offer to addressing the significant health care management challenges facing many services
7. Appreciate the role of operational management in the broader health and aged care context