{"title":"IRS ruling makes patient power a reality for all employers.","authors":"Greg Scandlen","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In June, 2002, the Internal Revenue Service released guidance on the use of Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs) by employers. This action added another important tool to the effort to restore patient power to a financing system that has become ever more dysfunctional over the years. HRAs are far more flexible in design than earlier efforts such as Medical Savings Accounts or Flexible Spending Accounts. Ironically, because of the IRS, innovation is likely to continue in the area of employee benefits.</p>","PeriodicalId":79681,"journal":{"name":"Managed care quarterly","volume":"10 4","pages":"1-3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"22224094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Assessing managed care market variation in reports of coding accuracy.","authors":"Daniel P Lorence, Amanda Spink, Robert Jameson","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The implementation of larger, faster and more comprehensive databases in healthcare delivery settings is an emerging outgrowth of evidence-based medicine. This study seeks to assess, at a national level, the degree of uniformity across markets in utilization and management of coded medical information. Implications for managers and policymakers, related to comparative managed care data benchmarks, are reviewed.</p>","PeriodicalId":79681,"journal":{"name":"Managed care quarterly","volume":"10 4","pages":"15-25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"22224098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why are HMOs leaving the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program?","authors":"Christine C Rinn","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":79681,"journal":{"name":"Managed care quarterly","volume":"10 3","pages":"61-6"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"22150907","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Consumer driven healthcare and the birth of health reimbursement arrangements.","authors":"Randall K Abbott, Kenneth E Feltman","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Consumers are quickly becoming more involved in the decisionmaking process as consumer-driven healthcare plans are surfacing across the country. When benefit programs are designed properly and when employees are properly informed, they can make wise decisions about healthcare that fits their needs and can help them save money. The process of engaging the plan member has come to be called consumer driven or consumer centric healthcare. The strategy of redefining responsibilities and costs between employer and plan member is generically referred to as a defined contribution strategy. Embedded in these efforts are choice, flexibility, and the belief that plan members can play an active part in managing costs when they are informed and empowered. Communication, education, and the use of Web-enabled technology are critical elements of this process.</p>","PeriodicalId":79681,"journal":{"name":"Managed care quarterly","volume":"10 4","pages":"4-7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"22224095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Information therapy: prescribing the right information to the right person at the right time.","authors":"Donald W Kemper, Molly Mettler","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":79681,"journal":{"name":"Managed care quarterly","volume":"10 4","pages":"43-6"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"22224101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Health plan responses to managed care regulation.","authors":"Robert E Hurley, Debra A Draper","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Little effort has been made to understand operational responses of health plans to the cascade of regulation imposed on them in the past decade. Using data from the Community Tracking Study, we cast some light on this area and illustrate how regulatory initiatives have produced both intended and unintended consequences. The findings both confirm speculation about regulatory effects and reveal some surprising and troubling developments.</p>","PeriodicalId":79681,"journal":{"name":"Managed care quarterly","volume":"10 4","pages":"30-42"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"22224100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Quality is in the eye of the consumer.","authors":"Allan Fine","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":79681,"journal":{"name":"Managed care quarterly","volume":"10 1","pages":"iii-iv"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"25163355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Patients, physicians, and the Internet.","authors":"Ted Eytan, James Hereford","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Washington-based Group Health Cooperative has been providing personalized services to patients over the Internet for a year through the MyGroupHealth member portal. We continue to refine our communications to meet the needs of our patients online in the absence of experience comparable to that which we have gained in 54 years of in-person and telephone interactions.</p>","PeriodicalId":79681,"journal":{"name":"Managed care quarterly","volume":"10 1","pages":"11-5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"25164993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Which prescription for the illegible and unreadable DTC (direct-to-consumer) brief summary--major surgery or euthanasia?","authors":"Mark Hochhauser","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Healthcare costs are rising, mostly because of increased prescription drug use, chiefly as the result of direct-to-consumer drug ads on television, newspapers, and magazines. However, the FDA's requirement for a brief summary in direct-to-consumer drug ads has produced summaries that are ineffective because they are illegible and unreadable, create information overload, and require literacy skills not possessed by most consumers. If the FDA wants brief summaries to be in a patient-friendly format, it should provide document design templates and plain language examples. Unless brief summaries are written so that they can be understood by the average patient, they should be overhauled or done away with.</p>","PeriodicalId":79681,"journal":{"name":"Managed care quarterly","volume":"10 3","pages":"6-10"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"22150898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Barriers to healthcare for people with mobility impairments.","authors":"Bonnie O'Day, Pamela Dautel, Jessica Scheer","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":79681,"journal":{"name":"Managed care quarterly","volume":"10 3","pages":"41-51"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"22150903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}