By 1994 the total cost of health care in the United States approached $900 billion annually. In reaction to this explosive growth, the managed care industry, acting as the agent and administrator for government and health care payers, has taken an increasingly aggressive stance on controlling costs with a view toward hospitalization as the last option for mental health treatment. This new emphasis on cost containment demands effective and less costly alternatives to hospitalization. Although most clinicians have grudgingly accepted the inevitability of both managed care and cost controls, the question remains: How can we develop a coherent mental health care system that controls costs while working effectively for both patients and clinicians? In Managing Care, Not Dollars, leading clinical experts argue that in order to survive, psychiatric institutions must offer a full range of services to large numbers of patients. Rather than concentrating on budget issues, clinicians and hospital administrators should use advances in treatment and technology to develop a coherent continuum of mental health care capable of delivering a wide variety of effective treatment options and alternatives to hospitalization. This guide to the creation and use of the emerging continuum of care provides an in-depth examination of the individual components of seven state-of-the-art treatment programs including suitable patients, treatment goals, staffing, physical plant, and special adaptations for children and the elderly. It also offers decision-making tools for managers to use to adapt their existing programs to survive in this new era and reviews the various public policy issues arising out of the health care transformation. By reading this book, clinicians, policymakers, and administrators can begin to grapple with the problem of learning to do more with less.

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 text aims to provide answer to questions such as what happens when you get dropped from a managed care panel? How do you get paid? Why can't you get on a managed care panel? This book is an extended question and answer session where issues are tackled from the providers perspective.; Armed with the resources, examples and explanations provided in this book, clinicians will be positioned to make the decisions that contribute to success under managed care.

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.

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

How can behavioral health clinicians provide managed care in an ethical, professionally satisfying way while also dealing with managed care organizations (MCOs)? This concise yet powerful volume will jump-start clinicians in their search for effective answers. Unlike other managed care guides, which tend to view the clinician-managed care relationship as inherently adversarial, this groundbreaking pocket guide (another in American Psychiatric Publishing's Concise Guides series) views resource management as a basic function -- indeed, an ally -- of ethical clinical practice. True managed care both improves the quality of clinical care and protects community resources. It even stimulates patients to become more active managers of their own care. The author, speaking from extensive first-hand experience as both network provider and MCO administrator, asserts that clinicians must know how to manage care themselves to effectively persuade insurance companies to pay for treatment. Toward that end, the author details the practical tools clinicians need in just five chapters: Chapter 1, Managing Care Ethically, discusses basic principles and methods for making clinical decisions about behavioral health care when resources are limited and methods for communicating these decisions to patients and MCOs. Chapter 2, Managing Nonacute Care, applies the principles and methods from Chapter 1 to providing non-acute, usually outpatient, services. Chapter 3, Managing Acute Care, applies the principles and methods from Chapter 1 to providing acute crisis or inpatient services. Chapter 4, Marketing to Managed Care Organizations, details strategies for negotiating contracts to often unreceptive MCOs who consider their networks full, showing how clinicians can enhance their market value by filling MCO needs. Chapter 5, Managing Utilization Review, offers insights on overseeing the clinical work of colleagues and shaping the health care system, assuming that care managers are professionally obligated to help patients receive the care they need and deserve without intruding on the clinician's role, and that the best management manages least, taking responsibility for efficient resource utilization and ongoing system improvement. This practical guide is more than just a handbook for successfully navigating MCO procedures and market dynamics; it also shows that the outcome of truly managed care can be just as satisfying and effective as care provided with infinite resources. Invaluable to clinicians in everyday practice, this remarkable guide with its unique insights, collaborative approach, and case examples will also find a wide audience among clinical administrators in private and public MCOs who train network clinicians and utilization managers.