Health Care Economics and Organizations

Health care economics and organizations studies how incentives, institutions, and organizational structures shape the financing, delivery, and outcomes of health care.

Connect

Health Insurance: Coverage that pools financial risk by paying some or all costs of specified health services. Insurance changes patients’ prices at the point of care and determines how providers are paid.
Health Economics: The study of how scarce resources are allocated in health and health care. It supplies the economic framework for analyzing financing, delivery, and outcomes.
Health Maintenance Organization: A health insurance organization that uses a defined provider network and typically coordinates covered care. HMOs illustrate how insurers structure access and manage utilization.
Single-Payer Healthcare: A health financing system in which one public or quasi-public payer covers a defined population. It contrasts with fragmented multi-payer financing in how funds are collected and administered.
Health Care Cost: The monetary resources used to provide, purchase, or administer health care. Organizational design and payment incentives influence the level and distribution of spending.
Fee-for-Service: A payment method that compensates providers separately for each service delivered. Per-service payment can reward higher volume rather than better outcomes.
Asymmetric Information: A condition in which parties to an exchange possess different information relevant to their decisions. Patients and providers often know different things about illness, treatment, and quality.
Accountable Care Organization: A group of health care providers accountable for the cost and quality of care for a defined population. Its shared performance goals link provider organization to spending and outcomes.
Social Health Insurance: A financing system that uses compulsory contributions to social insurance funds to cover health care. It offers a distinct institutional model from tax-funded or predominantly private insurance.
Health Care Access: The ability to obtain appropriate health services when they are needed. Prices, coverage, provider supply, and organizational rules determine practical access.