Mental health and selection of preferred providers. Experience in three employee groups

Health maintenance organizations and hospital quality for coronary artery bypass surgery

This study uses hospital discharge data for 1992-1994 to assess differences between HMO and insured non-HMO patients in California and Florida with regard to the quality of the hospitals used for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. The authors found that commercially insured HMO patients in California used higher quality hospitals than commercially insured non-HMO patients, controlling for patient distance to the hospital. In contrast, commercially insured HMO and non-HMO patients in Florida were similarly distributed across hospitals of different quality levels, whereas Medicare HMO patients in Florida used lower quality hospitals than patients in the standard Medicare program. The authors conclude that the association between HMO coverage and hospital quality may differ across geographic areas and patient populations, possibly related to the maturity and structure of managed care markets.

Mental health and managed care

Managed care has become the dominant method for financing and delivering care for common mental health problems and for people with severe, chronic mental health conditions. Despite the rapid growth of managed mental health care, there is very little research available to guide policy choices. Managed care has led to decreased costs for employers and other payers, mostly through reducing hospital admissions or length of stay. Managed care organizations use staff with lesser levels of training (e.g. social workers instead of psychiatrists) and are more likely to offer group outpatient programs and manualized treatment than their fee-for-service counterparts. Despite these differences, there is no clear evidence that health outcomes are worse for patients in managed care. There is an urgent need for researchers to turn their attention to issues such as cost, quality, access, satisfaction, and functional outcomes associated with managed mental health care. The impact of parity of mental health with insurance coverage for physical conditions is another important question that needs to be addressed.

Segmentation of hospital markets: where do HMO enrollees get care?

Commercially insured and Medicare patients who are not in health maintenance organizations (HMOs) tend to use different hospitals than HMO patients use. This phenomenon, called market segmentation, raises important questions about how hospitals that treat many HMO patients differ from those that treat few HMO patients, especially with regard to quality of care. This study of patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery found no evidence that HMOs in southeast Florida systematically channel their patients to high-volume or low-mortality hospitals. These findings are consistent with other evidence that in many areas of the country, incentives for managed care plans to reduce costs may outweigh incentives to improve quality.