Successful practices outside of managed care result from developing personal passions, creating opportunities. . . and reading this book! Walfish connects the reader not only to real psychologists who have found a variety of niches but also to ready-touse strategies and practical references. You're sure to find several ideas to expand your practice.ùJana N. Martin, PhD, independent practice and Chief Operating Officer of the American Psychological insurance Trust --

The rapid spread of managed care into public and community mental health systems is creating a dramatic transformation of traditional public sector settings. This radical change is affecting administrators, managers, and clinicians.Intended as a survival manual, this book begins with an overview of the history, concepts, ideology, and ethics of public sector managed care and then proceeds in focus from system to program management to clinical program levels. With a concluding section on advocacy, evaluation, research, and training issues, Managed Mental Health Care in the Public Sector examines how public sector managed mental health care can be approached with a positive spirit, an excitement about the potential to create dramatic and beneficial system changes, and a genuine interest in investigating the relative merits of every aspect of managed care systems.

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.

Ask for a definition of primary care, and you are likely to hear as many answers as there are health care professionals in your survey. Primary Care fills this gap with a detailed definition already adopted by professional organizations and praised at recent conferences. This volume makes recommendations for improving primary care, building its organization, financing, infrastructure, and knowledge baseâ€"as well as developing a way of thinking and acting for primary care clinicians. Are there enough primary care doctors? Are they merely gatekeepers? Is the traditional relationship between patient and doctor outmoded? The committee draws conclusions about these and other controversies in a comprehensive and up-to-date discussion that covers: The scope of primary care. Its philosophical underpinnings. Its value to the patient and the community. Its impact on cost, access, and quality. This volume discusses the needs of special populations, the role of the capitation method of payment, and more. Recommendations are offered for achieving a more multidisciplinary education for primary care clinicians. Research priorities are identified. Primary Care provides a forward-thinking view of primary care as it should be practiced in the new integrated health care delivery systemsâ€"important to health care clinicians and those who train and employ them, policymakers at all levels, health care managers, payers, and interested individuals.

Managing Managed Care II: A Handbook for Mental Health Professionals, Second Edition, provides an easy-to-learn, easy-to-use method for documenting and communicating the necessity, appropriateness, and course of treatment for managed care review. Using the Patient Impairment Profile method, practitioners can convincingly convey a clinical rationale for treatment, efficiently track progress over time, and demonstrate favorable patient outcomes. Keeping pace with the evolving and expanding presence of managed care, the authors have extensively revised and enlarged the previous edition. New clinical research on the validity and reliability of the impairment terminology has produced a much-improved, clinically valid, and statistically reliable impairment lexicon. Detailed severity rating qualifiers, reference lists of patient objectives, and a useful glossary have been added. All regulations have also been updated. Managing Managed Care II is reference and valuable resource for mental health practitioners and for the individuals who monitor and review treatment. By providing concise, relevant, and outcome-focused treatment information, practitioners become proactive participants in managed care while adeptly articulating the value and quality of their services.

Each year, more than 33 million Americans receive health care for mental or substance-use conditions, or both. Together, mental and substance-use illnesses are the leading cause of death and disability for women, the highest for men ages 15-44, and the second highest for all men. Effective treatments exist, but services are frequently fragmented and, as with general health care, there are barriers that prevent many from receiving these treatments as designed or at all. The consequences of this are seriousâ€"for these individuals and their families; their employers and the workforce; for the nation's economy; as well as the education, welfare, and justice systems. Improving the Quality of Health Care for Mental and Substance-Use Conditions examines the distinctive characteristics of health care for mental and substance-use conditions, including payment, benefit coverage, and regulatory issues, as well as health care organization and delivery issues. This new volume in the Quality Chasm series puts forth an agenda for improving the quality of this care based on this analysis. Patients and their families, primary health care providers, specialty mental health and substance-use treatment providers, health care organizations, health plans, purchasers of group health care, and all involved in health care for mental and substanceâ€"use conditions will benefit from this guide to achieving better care.

Mental illness is the poor, and somehow "damaged," cousin to physical ailments in the eyes of too many in our society. Compare the difference in how people would respond to someone who had fallen and broken their leg on the street, to how most react to those mentally ill among us, on those same streets, who spend their winters on steam grates and forage for food in dumpsters. Rationing Sanity is a provocative analysis of the mental health care system in the United States, dealing with issues of justice and access to mental health care. How should a decent society, affluent but facing many serious calls on its resources, best care for citizens afflicted with severe and persistent mental illnesses? James Lindemann Nelson brings together, for the first time, scholars of the ethics of mental health care and top managed care policy analysts to address this crucial problem. Rationing Sanity integrates those perspectives with the thoughtful practice-based experience of physicians well versed in the actual care of people with emotional and behavioral problems. Over a period of years, the contributors met face-to-face to engage each other on the ethics of managed mental health care—the result is a unique, collaborative effort that provides a wealth of important new insights on not only how Americans can readjust their attitudes toward the mentally ill—but also how we may find more just and humane treatment for those afflicted.