Course Syllabus

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HPA 57

Consumer Choices in Health Care

Contents

Instructor

  • Instructor: To Be Determined
  • Email: To Be Determined (*Canvas Inbox is best for contacting the instructor)
  • Phone: To Be Determined

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Please note that the specifics of this Course Syllabus are subject to change. Instructors will notify students of any changes and students will be responsible for abiding them. Even if you print this syllabus, please check the online version, especially the course summary (schedule), often.

Course Description

Consumer Choices in Health Care is a General Education Health and Wellness (GH) course. It serves as an introduction to consumers' role in health-care decisions, including health benefits, physician and hospital choice, and end-of-life choices.

This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the breadth of decisions related to health and health care in the United States. This course introduces students to the consumers' role in health-related decisions, including assessing health risks, health benefits, service choices, and end-of-life care. The growth in available health care information resources, the expansion of for-profit medical care, and increasing cost pressure are transforming the role of the health care consumers from passive recipients to active participants in many health care decisions. The main goal of this course is to educate students to become knowledgeable health care consumers and providing them with opportunities to learn how to gather, analyze, and synthesize information about health and health care to make sound health care choices. Students will learn practical information, key terminology, and where/how to find reliable, up-to-date information on different sectors of the health care system (e.g. physicians, hospitals, commercial and public health insurance, mental health, long-term care).

Active learning is a critical component of this course, as students must actively gather information and use it to make decisions. It requires students to write about the choices they make through assignments that demonstrate their understanding of the information resources and the reasoning underlying their choices.

  • Prerequisites: None
  • Number of credits: 3 credit hours

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Objectives

  • Students will develop a basic understanding of the major players in the US healthcare system and how they interact with each other.
  • Students will learn how to make logical and rational judgments about the health care decisions they face.
  • Students will learn how to critically analyze the growing sources of information on health and healthcare providers.

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Materials

No required text. All course materials provided via Canvas.

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Library Services

Penn State Libraries provides a wide variety of services and resources. To learn how to take advantage, refer to the Online Student Library Guide. This guide serves as your starting point for access to all that Penn State Libraries offers you as an online student. Use this guide if you have questions on library services offered to you, how the library can help you, how to use the library, or what resources you can access via the library. The guide will connect you to important pages and resources within Penn State Libraries and save time from you searching for the information you need.

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Assignments

Basic information about each assignment group is provided in this section. For detailed directions about an individual assignment, see the assignment information in the Modules tab. Additionally, this section will include information related to due dates and late work policies.

 

Assignment and Grading Overview
Type of Assignment How Many Points for Each Total Points Possible
Overview Activities 3 Varies 6 points
Activities 4 Varies 100 points
Website Evaluation 5 Varies 30 points
Hospital Assessment 7 Varies 40 points
Quizzes 5 25 points each 125 points
Exams 1 30 points 30 points
Course Total 331 points

Overview Activities

Orientation activities designed to ensure students understand the information on the syllabus and get to know each other.

Activities

Assignments completed individually to evaluate and reflect upon lesson content.

Activities with Group Interaction

2 assignments, with multiple sub-components, evaluating online medical information and hospitals.

Although the work you submit for these activities will be your own work (reflective essays) and not a combined group effort, you will be evaluated for your interaction with group members and your level of contribution to the discussion. Both the quality and quantity of posts will be assessed. The quality, quantity, and timeliness of posts will be assessed.

You may not make up group work. If you do not participate, you get a zero. There are no alternative individual assignments.

Quizzes

5 quizzes assessing knowledge of content throughout the course.

All quizzes, with the exception of the syllabus quiz (Week 1), will be closed notes. This means that you may not use your notes or have any other browsers open on your computer when you take the quiz.

Email me if you would like to review the quiz questions you answered incorrectly.  In an effort to enhance learning, all requests to review missed quiz questions should be made within a week of the quiz closing.  Requests to review all missed quiz questions at the end of the semester will not be honored.  Be a proactive learner!

Exams

There will be one cumulative final exam. The final exam will consist of multiple-choice questions. The final exam is open notes.

Due Dates

All assignments are due by 11:59 PM Eastern Time on the date indicated on the Calendar unless noted otherwise. (Due dates can be also be viewed under the Syllabus tab.) Please be aware that Canvas follows the Eastern Time (ET) time zone. Assignment due dates adhere to this time zone, and it is your responsibility to submit assignments accordingly. If you are outside of the ET time zone, you can set your Canvas account to sync to it. Refer to the Set a Time Zone article in the Canvas Guide Links to an external site..

Late Work Policy

No quizzes/assignments will be accepted late for full credit.

  • Late quizzes/assignments, if turned in within one week of their due date*, will earn a maximum of 75% (your score x .75). Note that most quizzes and forms remain open in Canvas for two weeks.
  • If you turn in your assignment after the initial deadline, it will be worth 75% of its earned value. I will adjust the scores of any late assignments and add a comment in the Canvas grade book.
  • It is your responsibility to look at the course calendar to know when each assignment is due.
  • Assignments turned in more than one week late will not receive credit.
  • Likewise, assignments turned in after the end of the semester (defined as the due date of the final exam) will not receive credit.

*Because discussions are designed to be interactive and are often part of group activities, late posts will not be accepted for credit. Additionally, you have less leeway (shorter deadlines) in submitting forms/scorecards late for group projects.  Late essays will not be accepted for activities that involve group work. See activity instructions and grading rubrics for details.

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Grading

Final grades will be assigned based on the following grading scheme:

Course Grading Scheme
Grade Percentage
A 95-100%
A- 90-94%
B+ 87-89%
B 84-86%
B- 80-83%
C+ 77-79%
C 70-76%
D 65-69%
F <65%

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Additional Links and Resources

Review information related to technical requirements, Penn State policies, and student resources.

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Course Summary:

Date Details Due