Managed Care Essay

The Iron triangle for healthcare consists of cost, quality, and access; these three characteristics when balanced create great healthcare. Managed Care Organizations combine the three to offer consumers with care that is appropriate for their individual needs. Our book describes managed care organizations as “the cost management of healthcare services by controlling who the consumer sees and how much the service cost” (Basics of the U.S Healthcare System, Niles). Taking a look at the history prior to the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 (HMO ACT of 1973) the implementation has been significant in balancing cost, and quality control. Before this Act was signed in to law by President Nixon healthcare costs were determined by fee for service. A fee for service or indemnity plan is a plan that allows the provider to determine the cost of service, this fee for service plan caused for healthcare costs to increase rapidly. An example of this would be going to the doctor with neck pain, being told to stretch then receiving a bill for 25,000 dollars. As could be understood the cost of healthcare had became a problem.

There are also two other less common forms of managed care. Point-of-service organizations differ from the previous two forms because they allow their clients to choose a doctor outside of the network for a slightly higher copayment (Chitty & Black, 2007). The last type of managed care involves a hospital corporation teaming with a select group of medical staff. Their teams then negotiate with managed care organizations or self-insured employers to set fees for different services (Chitty & Black, 2007).

Throughout the last half of the 20th century, employers have acted on their own to regulate health costs by requiring employees to join health maintenance organizations (HMOs). More than 100 million Americans are under managed care. However, many patients and doctors complain that HMOs impose too many regulations and sacrifice healthcare quality. HMOs are undergoing a high level of scrutiny due to criticisms that the network is controlling and jeopardizing the healthcare system of the nation.

What is managed care? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, managed care is “a system of health care in which patients agree to visit only certain doctors and hospitals, and in which the cost of treatment is monitored by a managing company.” Managed care is a variety of techniques designed to essentially reduce the cost of providing health benefits and advance the quality of care. In the United States alone, there are various managed care programs, that span from less restrictive to more restrictive. As recently stated in the National Institutes of Health, the future of managed care is uncertain. It is enthralling to note that in spite of the advances in the health care systems, such as our hospital’s ability to provide patients

At one point, managed care was the viewed as a resourceful tool in efforts to help assist employee, physicians and hospitals with quality health care, while controlling the cost of medical care in the United States. Over the past 30 years, managed care has been in the limelight of health insurance, as a dictator of how it will pay for medical bills. There have been many factors playing a role with managed care over the years. For example, due to the slim selection of options that are available with physicians in rural areas, and limited physicians to choose from, does this compromise the quality of care of each member or does this cut off services for members

Managed care has a huge impact on the united states health system. Managed care is simply the qualitative care and costs effective heath care management in US health system. Many US citizen who is not getting proper treatment for their disease and disorder are greatly benefit from managed care. As managed care increase in improving health care services, low income family member is hugely impacted by it. managed care is cost effective in which lower the cost of service and get high quality of treatment from the provider. Even though managed care beneficiaries to many of US citizen to obtain qualitative health care from the provider, they have a hard time on finding out the accurate primary care provider who is associate with insurance. Managed care is one of the best cost saving or

managed care grew more in the last years, bringing about new types of managed care plans through competing MCOs. To make their plans more attractive, organizations used payment variations. For instance, instead of capitation, PPOs used discounted fees payment. There were ones that offered enrollees choices between affiliated providers and non-affiliated providers. MCOs also adopted various methods to control health care costs by actively monitoring utilization (Shi, Singh, 2017). Additionally, private health insurance, as well as high deductible health plans, can be offered as managed care plans nowadays. Also, available to Medicare and Medicaid recipients is the option to enroll in a managed care plan or continuing to stay with the traditional fee-for service program. Now for specific services HMOs incorporates capitation and fee-for-service reimbursement, in their payment schemes.

Managed care is a system that, in varying degrees, integrates the financing and delivery of medical care through contracts with selected physicians and hospitals that provide comprehensive healthcare services to enrolled members (Iglehart, 1994). It also helps to control costs by controlling the delivery of services. While all managed care organizations are slightly different in their version of managed care, three seminal tenets embody the philosophy of all healthcare that is managed (Navarro & Cahill).

Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), that provides a wide-ranging option of services, over a period f time and at a fixed rate.

As we all know Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) have one major goal, and that is to save money. Whether it is by reducing care, incentivizing doctor s or advertising, they are pursuing their goal. In fact, we all know that back in the 70s the rise of healthcare cost pushed this initiative, and that although it has been criticized over the years, it has proven to some extent that it does reduce cost, to the point that Medicaid and Medicare have adopted their model. However, despite all the efforts, healthcare costs continued to rise, and skepticism arose. In fact, it wasn’t long until people were saying that managed care had failed. Furthermore, a new tool was developed

The purpose of this assignment is to choose a Managed Care Organizations (MCO) that operates within your state or local community, discuss the MCO in detail and determine which MCO model best represents this organization. Outline the historical perspective of the organization, summarize the medical/organizational structure and explain the model of governance.

Generally, the managed care system is a network provider which integrates the doctors and healthcare facilities under one system. It is thus responsible for creating the financial incentives and reducing the cost of health for client by negotiating with and by networking with health providers across the US (Kreindler, 2012). Today, the managed care organizations are found everywhere in the US but have become somewhat controversial because of their goals of controlling the medical costs which has somehow produced unethical practices. They have been accused of becoming consumer driven and therefore, profit making machine rather than delivery services to the clients. They have also been accused of charging very high fees that are unaffordable for most Americans (Goodrick & Reay, 2016).

Traditional Health Insurance Plans: you may select your own provider, you pay a deductible and a percentage of the cost, and you don’t need a referral.

HMOS and PPOS organizations are a type of managed care that are designed to reduce the cost of health care down. In HMOS organization encourages healthy lifestyles and focuses on more wellness care of its member by offering preventive care, tests and doing physicals to prevent diseases early before its escalators which can cut costs down tremendously “prevention of a disease early detection and treatment save health care prices in the long run when the path of a disease is broken before it turns into complex” (Shi, Singh, 2013, P, 222). HMOS uses Gatekeepers to prevent patients receiving unnecessary treatments and offer health education courses for its members and discounted health club. Preferred Provider Organization lower costs down by

Different types of Managed care organization provide service and intended to reduce the medical cost through various mechanism. Their long-term service includes economic incentives for physicians and patient to select the less costly form of care which will control the inpatient admission, patient length of stay, cost of outpatient surgery and overall healthcare cost (Gosh, 2009).