Managed Care Strategies

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.

Here in 25 authoritative articles drawn from the highly respected journal Health Care Management Review, you'll discover what you'll need to lead your organization into the generation of managed care. From short range issues like making existing product lines efficient to the policy logic of building comprehensive, integrated systems, this reference will help managers in a provider, insurer, buyer, or government organization create a successfully integrated organization.

Of all the recent changes in health care, none have more dramatically affected both patients and care providers than managed care. Not only has it altered the way we pay for health care but also it has compelled a change in the way we approach health care, focusing increasingly on preventive care to reduce costs. In Managed Care, Dr. Margaret M. Conger and her colleagues examine the impact of managed care on nursing as a profession and nurses as individual caregivers. Organized into three sections, Managed Care looks at the nature of managed care, nursing strategies in acute care hospitals, and nursing strategies in community settings. Section I examines the evolution of managed care, definitions, and issues informing this method of service delivery, and nursing involvement in quality of care and case management. In Section II, the authors look at acute care settings, discussing the use of nurse extenders, advanced practice nursing, case management, automated clinical pathways, and outcome research. Section III addresses the community settings and explores case management, advanced practice roles in community health clinics, and collaboration in primary care settings. Managed Care will serve as an excellent course text on nursing and managed care, as well as being a useful introduction and shelf reference for professional nurses at all levels.

Making Managed Healthcare Work is your comprehensive guide to developing and implementing a new strategic approach to managed care that's practical, performance-based, and results-oriented. Learn how to prepare for, identify, pursue, negotiate and implement a new type of managed care arrangement that can accomplish the objective of delivering quality care at competitive prices.

This book is a guide to strategic training for physicians in an era of managed care. The first half of the book provides a step-by-step process to help physicians take their practices into the new world of integrated delivery systems. The second half of the book covers a variety of key topics such as credentialing, reimbursement systems, and utilization management.

This book helps nurse managers define their role in the managed care system, learn strategies in financial management and focus on preventative care, while working on re-engineering patient care delivery systems, utilization, and outcomes management. It addresses topics from defining managed care andexplaining how a company works, to addressing ethical and legal issues that arise in the managed care system.

America's Health Care Safety Net explains how competition and cost issues in today's health care marketplace are posing major challenges to continued access to care for America's poor and uninsured. At a time when policymakers and providers are urgently seeking guidance, the committee recommends concrete strategies for maintaining the viability of the safety netâ€"with innovative approaches to building public attention, developing better tools for tracking the problem, and designing effective interventions. This book examines the health care safety net from the perspectives of key providers and the populations they serve, including: Components of the safety netâ€"public hospitals, community clinics, local health departments, and federal and state programs. Mounting pressures on the systemâ€"rising numbers of uninsured patients, decline in Medicaid eligibility due to welfare reform, increasing health care access barriers for minority and immigrant populations, and more. Specific consequences for providers and their patients from the competitive, managed care environmentâ€"detailing the evolution and impact of Medicaid managed care. Key issues highlighted in four populationsâ€"children with special needs, people with serious mental illness, people with HIV/AIDS, and the homeless.