Full course description
This course provides students with an overview of how healthcare policy develops from origin to implementation through regulatory agencies, industry stakeholders, and the healthcare delivery system. Designed for adult learners, this 10-week online asynchronous course supports workforce preparation and future credential and credit opportunities through PSC’s Credit for Prior Learning and Prior Learning Assessment pathway.
Students will examine how societal values, ethics, economics, legislation, and advocacy shape healthcare policy at the community, state, national, and global levels. Using the 4P framework—patient, provider, payer, and population—students will analyze how healthcare policies affect multiple stakeholders and how competing interests influence policy development, implementation, and negotiation within healthcare systems.
Throughout the course, students will explore the legislative and regulatory processes that guide healthcare policy, evaluate the influence of major healthcare organizations and advocacy groups, and examine current and emerging healthcare policy issues. Emphasis is placed on policy analysis, communication, negotiation, advocacy, and evidence-based decision-making within complex healthcare environments.
This self-paced course requires approximately 10 hours of work per week and includes formative checks for understanding throughout the term, culminating in a final applied project in which students analyze healthcare policy issues and evaluate their impact on stakeholders, healthcare systems, and public health outcomes.
A certificate of completion will be awarded to students who successfully complete the course.
At the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Discuss how societal values shape healthcare policies that influence regulatory bodies, the industry and the healthcare delivery system
- Explain the process by which healthcare policy leads to the implementation of laws that support the healthcare policy
- Ascertain the impact that a healthcare policy has on each of the 4 P’s (patients, providers, payers and the population) to negotiate their competing interests
- Identify organizations on a local, state, federal and global level that drive health care to illustrate the influence these organizations have on implementing healthcare policy
- Advocate for a public health policy to influence key decision makers