The Health Policy and Management (HPAM) Gap-From Diagnosis to Prescription: a response to two commentaries

We reflected on why the field of HPAM has had little impact on the basic arrangements within which most physicians practice. We argued that this failure reflects four dimensions of a theory-policy-practice gap: 1) The dominance of microeconomic thinking; 2) The lack of learning from comparative case studies in healthcare management; 3) The separation of HPAM from frontline medical providers; and 4) The failure to expose medical students to issues of HPAM with respect to the organizational and regulatory environments in which they will ultimately work.