Operations management considers how systems work and how we can make them better.
SPHA 542 Operations and Logistics (MHA Year Two) provides a series of techniques to help recognize and remove bottlenecks and waste in health care systems so that we can do more with the same resources.
The course begins and ends with the ‘home nurses game’ – a simulation where students are put into teams and given a role that mimics an inefficient system for treating elderly patients in their home. Through a series of five sessions, students are presented with theories and methods to identify waste and bottlenecks as well as strategies and tools to improve health care systems. Students then redesign the home nurses system and play the game again to see how it can be improved.
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Instructor Profile
Dr. Nick Bansback
Dr. Nick Bansback
Associate Director, UBC MHA Program
Assistant Professor, School of Population and Public Health
Dr. Nick Bansback is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator whose research aims to inform policies and practices in health through the application of health economics and decision theory. He moved to Vancouver from the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, where he conducted research on the cost-effectiveness of drugs and technologies to inform the United Kingdom government (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence).
Methodological areas of research include measuring and valuing health, economic evaluation, and network meta-analysis. He has published widely in the use of preference-based instruments such as the EQ-5D. He has also conducted numerous economic evaluations in rheumatology. An emerging research focus seeks to improve decision-making at the patient/physician consultation using decision support tools.
He has degrees in mathematics, health services research, and health economics from the University of Sheffield, and completed his postdoctoral training at the University of British Columbia.