Physician's Guide to Managed Care

This book contains black-and-white illustrations.

Here you'll find the practical guidance you need to transition smoothly into the managed care environment. You'll learn the pros and cons of practicing in a managed care setting, the daily life of managed care physicians, the role of managed care in medical education and health care reform. Discover how to take advantage of new opportunities and avoid pitfalls, balance cost consideration with clinical decision—making, and understand the case mix systems most frequently used in managed care. Written almost entirely by physicians, The Physician's Guide to Managed Care is a must for any physician interested in meeting future challenges.

Herbert M. Hazelkorn

This new book, written for physicians by practicing physicians, administrators, and some academics, tries to cover all aspects of managed care that the contributors believe would interest the clinician, from ethics to payment systems to quality and cost control. The author attempts to provide the clinician with knowledge of managed care that he believes is the way of future practice. He believes it is more than a payment system; it is a way of practice to ensure greater appropriateness as well as cost and quality control. The book is directed to practicing physicians whose ideas as well as those of the American Medical Association are changing, although not very rapidly. An important audience is the young students and practitioners who are getting some knowledge of managed care in certain institutions. The best feature does not come off as well as it might. It is described as a commentary, but actually it is really a review and support of each chapter. The foreword by Edward Hughes is quite well done in that it sets up a good basis for the discussion of managed care. This is a nice book that accomplishes what it sets out to do, but it breaks no new ground. It is easy to read and may help convince some practitioners that the change is coming. Not enough emphasis is placed on the fact that most managed care practices are the Independent Practice Association type rather than the staff model, and therefore there is less peer review or regulation of what is going on. The overview by the author is also very nicely done.

Nash, David B., MD, MBA (Jefferson Medical Coll of Thomas Jefferson Univ)

The contributors are mostly MDs, with a few MBAs and MPHs. Most are affiliated with a health care corporation or a university center studying health care delivery systems.