Managed care and the focus on outcomes research

The authors discuss how cost outcomes research can help consumers, providers, and healthcare plan administrators understand the importance of including psychiatric benefits in healthcare plans and determine which mental health benefits should be covered so that they can design more effective benefit packages. In order to put the current healthcare situation in perspective, the authors begin by considering the factors that have led to the managed care movement. They trace the evolution of the healthcare crisis and outline the strategies government and private health plans have used in the past to try to control costs while ensuring access to care. In the second half of the paper, the authors explain how cost outcome studies can help provide information on how well treatments work and how much they cost so that administrators can evaluate the inclusion of these treatments in their plans. The authors describe how to measure health care costs and health outcomes, how to calculate a cost outcome ratio, and how to design a cost outcomes study. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications cost outcomes studies are likely to have on Healthcare policy.