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Conversations on The Changing Face Of Managed Care: Insights from Managed Care Magazine's Podcast Series (PDF)

34 pages. Articles include 'Seeing Through Transparency [from the Employer's Perspective],' 'Electronic Health Information,' 'The Future of Disease Management' and 'Consumer-Directed Health Plans.

Conversations on the Changing Face of Managed Care: Insights from the 2006-2007 Podcast Series (PDF)

34 pages. Excerpt: Managed care executives are inundated almost daily with information, which they need to read and process to keep up with the rapid changes taking place in health care. This supplement is based on a series of 10 podcasts that were conducted in late 2006 and the first half of 2007 to give health care professionals an opportunity to learn about new developments in managed care. The host for the series was Ian Morrison,PhD, an internationally known author, consultant, and futurist specializing in long-term forecasting and planning. Each podcast consisted of a discussion between Morrison and an expert on an issue important to the business and bottom line of managed care organizations.

Experts Say Managed Care at the Crossroads -- Again

Excerpt: As rising costs drive CEOs' collective blood pressure off the charts, a group of experts considers whether managed care has reached another watershed -- and whether the industry can reinvent itself yet again.

Managed Care Company Medical Directors Find Themselves Working More Closely with Employers

Excerpt: Employers are increasingly interested in working with insurers on such projects, mainly in an attempt to put a stop to escalating health care costs, health plans say. As the demand for clinical programming grows, marketing and sales staffs at health plans are turning to chief medical officers and medical directors ... to take the lead.

A Look at the California Department of Managed Care

March 2002. Excerpt: California sets a precedent again, with a bold effort to regulate the HMO industry. While the new Department of Managed Health Care is facing down 50,000 consumer gripes monthly, director Daniel Zingale intends to keep administrative red tape from overwhelming plans, patients, providers, and his department.

the Second Coming of Managed Care

Excerpt: Instead of one company doctor sitting in corporate headquarters making decisions about treatments and hospitalizations, several different people in many different locations manage patient care. In addition to health plans and insurance companies, care can be managed by external utilization-management companies; third-party administrators; benefit-management, disease-management, pharmacy-management, and mental-health-management companies; hospitals; employers; and government payers ...

Care Management Data Hard to Come By

Excerpt: As employers and health plans spend increasing sums on employee health management services, from health risk assessments to end-of-life case management, the question keeps coming up: Are we getting our money's worth?

Do We Really Have Best Health Care in the World?

Excerpt: Managed care has made strides in helping control overall health care costs in the last decade, and an increasing number of health plans are implementing prevention and wellness and disease management programs that improve the quality of care, but 'the burden of cost on our society created by the uninsured and underinsured continues to damage our ability to provide the best care possible,' says [Allen Schaffer, MD, senior vice president and chief medical officer of Cigna Healthcare].

CFO Magazine Devotes an Entire Issue to Health Care, Retirement Plans, IT/Outsourcing, and Perks

Excerpt: CFO magazine has devoted many stories to the topic [of the cost of employee benefits], but because the problem has reached critical proportions, and because other research suggests that companies don't think they manage the problem well, we decided the time had come to devote an entire issue to the subject.

A Conversation with Michael L. Millenson: Health Care Reform Movement Has Only Scratched Surface

Excerpt: Michael L. Millenson is frustrated at the pace of change in reducing medical errors and adopting evidence-based care. Ten years after writing the ground-breaking book, Demanding Medical Excellence: Doctors and Accountability in the Information Age, and six years after discussing it in his first Managed Care interview in 1999, Millenson says that progress has been slow and piecemeal.