Integrating Managed Care And Ethics

Integrating Managed Care and Ethics addresses legal and ethical challenges that arise in managed care and includes a discussion of trends, alluding to recent legislative/ regulatory initiatives, major legal cases, and examines guidance offered through several of the major healthcare trade associations. Its goal is to help the reader develop increased talent, tools, and techniques to help transform challenges and change into more positive outcomes.

Managed care has produced dramatic changes in the treatment of mental health and substance abuse problems, known as behavioral health. Managing Managed Care offers an urgently needed assessment of managed care for behavioral health and a framework for purchasing, delivering, and ensuring the quality of behavioral health care. It presents the first objective analysis of the powerful multimillion-dollar accreditation industry and the key accrediting organizations. Managing Managed Care draws evidence-based conclusions about the effectiveness of behavioral health treatments and makes recommendations that address consumer protections, quality improvements, structure and financing, roles of public and private participants, inclusion of special populations, and ethical issues. The volume discusses trends in managed behavioral health care, highlighting the emerging role of the purchaser. The committee explores problems of overlap and fragmentation in the delivery of behavioral health care and discusses the issue of access, a special concern when private systems are restricted and public systems overburdened. Highly applicable to the larger health care system, this volume will be of particular interest to all stakeholders in behavioral healthâ€"federal and state policymakers, public and private purchasers, health care providers and administrators, consumers and consumer advocates, accrediting organizations, and health services researchers.

This book traces the growth of managed care as a mechanism for curbing excessive growth in health costs, and the controversies that have risen around for-profit health care. Also examined are decentralization in US health care, and the absence of comprehensive health care planning, access rules, and minimum health care benefit standards. Finally, the author proposes a framework for improving access to quality, affordable health care in a competitive market environment.

This collection provides a philosophical and historical analysis of the development and current situation of managed care. It discusses the relationship between physician professionalism and patient rights to affordable, high quality care. Its special feature is its depth of analysis as the philosophical, social, and economic issues of managed care are developed. It will be of interest to educated readers in their role as patients and to all levels of medical and health care professionals.

Glaser and Hamel offer readers an opportunity to step back from the ethical issues connected with modern health care and reflect on what we are doing, how we are doing it, and what impact our actions (and omissions) are having on the common good. While offering a new ethical paradigm that takes into account the three realms of ethical complexity (societal issues, institutional issues, and individual issues), this book offers articles for reflection and self-examination on various aspects of managed care, taking into account specific issues such as rationing, financial incentives, and full disclosure.