The Iron Triangle For Healthcare

Managed care dominates health care in the United States. It is any health care delivery system that combines the functions of health insurance and the actual delivery of care, where costs and utilization of services are controlled by methods such as gatekeeping, case management, and utilization review. Different types of managed care plans came into development by three major factors. These factors include choice of providers, different ways of arranging the delivery of services, and payment and risk sharing. Types of managed care organizations include Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) which consist of five common models that differ according to how the HMO is related to the participating physicians, Preferred Provider Organizations

Why are access, quality and cost called the “iron triangle” of health care? Are there any ways of breaking this triangle?

As a managed care organization Kaiser Permanente has served as a model for informational healthcare systems and the recent demand for affordable care has prompted the organization to lower cost in services without hindering the quality of care. Kaiser Permanente has integrated a system in which the organization assumes all financial risk and a bundled enrollment fee for service strategy. What makes Kaiser Permanente unique from other HMOs is their accountability for quality, utilization management, financial risk, and business strategies (Kaiser Permanente, 2009).

Since the advent of health insurance in the 1950s, there have been many models of care that are come to the scene in an attempt to both control cost of care and improve quality of care. Insurance models came into being because the fee for service model used until then was proving to increase cost of healthcare without any measure of quality of services and care provided. Health insurance models have evolved from the basic hospital offered insurance to employer sponsored coverage plans. The US health system is broken both financially and quality wise with more than 20% of gross domestic product being spent on healthcare (Blackstone, 2016).

In this country there are numerous concerns about health care economics. Several factors contribute to the increase of health care costs. One area of concern is the impact of managed care on health care finances. Managed care has been around since the early 1970s. The definition of managed care is a set of contractual and management methods implemented to manage the financing and delivery of health care services. Initial implementation of managed care was for health care cost saving (Getzen & Moore, 2007, p. 203, para. 1). Though Managed care initially addressed several health care finance issues, there are still problems with the current

One of this health care’s programs objective is to limit the number of uninsured (Shi & Singh, 2015). This controversial healthcare plan incorporates a privately funded insurance which is paid for through employment and solely by the patient and a publicly funded insurance by the government. Medicare is provided for senior citizens 65 and older, and Medicaid is provided for low income citizens. The federal government and state government both partake in the funding of Medicaid. Although insurance is provided to the low income through Medicaid, the United States continues to suffer from cost escalation spending 17.1 percent of GDP on healthcare in 2013, a 50 percent more than the second nation (Commonwealth, n.d.) The high cost and limited coverage continues to spark up the conversation for a

The concept generates images of large healthcare entities managing the administrative protocols of prior authorization or denials to the actual delivery of care through a facility or network of healthcare providers. Hacker and Marmor (1999) described several meanings of the term managed care with the most applicable to the menagerie of forms managed care can take being a combination of the financing and delivery of healthcare services. While this particular study is dated, the authors contend any managed care structure features administrative oversight, patient steerage to a particular provider entity or network and the amount of risk-sharing whether at an individual or group level. These features continue to be true today as organizations explore the benefits offered to employees through managed care structures such as preferred provider organizations, clinically integrated networks, and accountable care organizations. As a healthcare provider, the goal is to provide access to healthcare which is affordable, offers access to providers of choice and engages with providers who provide the highest quality

One of the greatest changes in healthcare in the past ten years has been the rise of managed care, much to the displeasure of many patients and physicians alike. Managed care arose out of concern about spiraling healthcare costs and was designed to encourage physicians to give patients treatments that were cost-effective out of their own financial interests. "The consumer strategy was directed at imposing some barriers to use by levying various forms of co-insurance. The most common approaches used either deductibles (where the consumer paid the first portion of the bill a technique familiar in other types of insurance) or co-payments (where the consumer paid a portion of the bill and the insurance company the rest) or a combination of both' (Kane et al 1994). Managed care has given health insurance companies an increasingly significant voice in how treatment is administered and allocated. Managed care has proliferated in the past decade despite considerable criticism of the practice of 'nickel and diming' patients as well as the considerable bureaucratic red tape it is has generated. Also, research indicates that healthy, well-insured patients tend to over-consume care without meaningful co-pays but poorer, sicker patients can be deterred even by moderate co-payments and suffer negative health consequences (Kane et al 1994). However, managed care has not gone away and is a reality that all healthcare

Fee-for service arrangements prevailed as the preferred vehicle for financing health care services since World War II. As employers began to offer health insurance, premiums were fixed in such a way that most patients did not bear the full cost of their health care. As employer premiums rose to meet the escalating cost of health care services, efforts by government, business and the insurance industry focused on controlling utilization and reducing health care cost (Cox, 2001). Group health cooperatives were formed as early precursors of the modern health maintenance organization. As managed health care became more widespread, methods of cost containment became more prevalent by defining medical necessity, coverage policies, practice guidelines,

The disability benefits became apart of the social security coverage for the first time in history in 1954. After the successful completion of the disability coverage, Medicaid and Medicare were born in 1965. Although by this time, the government was still paying 75% of all health care costs, that was costing the government a lot of money. In 1980’s, the cost of health care sky rocketed and began to cost more than ever; by the early 1990’s the insurance companies noticed and decided to switch to what we all know as “fee for service” plans. This helped out many Americans and thus resulting in many people enrolling in managed health care plans that adapted this new system. In 1993, Bill Clinton had planned to pass a reform plan that would have guaranteed health insurance for everyone within the United States. Although in 1994, it was appealed by Congress as ‘too expensive and will need to be continuously regulated’. In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) was passed along with the Mental Health Act both used to help protect individuals and better insure many employers and employees (Northern California Neurosurgery Medical Group,

Managed care was established in order to manage health care cost, utilization, and quality (Kongstvedt, 2015). In managed care, health insurance is provided through HMO, PPO, and other types of managed care. It has the potential to reduced health care spending and improved the quality of care. However, despite of its success in improving the quality of care through preventive health care services, chronic disease management program, and so forth, many physicians are reluctant to be part of the managed care environment. Some of the reasons are the impact of managed care to physician’s income and autonomy. Under managed care, insurers have decreased the fees paid to physicians. There are different ways how managed care organizations control costs. One of this is through selective contracting with health care providers and hospitals to lower costs. In selective contracting, health care providers agreed to accept lower prices in exchanged for guaranteed volume of patients under managed care plan (Culyer, 2014). This paper will discuss more issues and trends in Managed Care Organizations such as the rise of Medicaid Managed Care spending, the new Medicaid Managed care Rule, and the collaboration of Managed Care Organizations and Accountable Care Organizations to reduce health care spending and improve efficiency of care.

One of the most eminent factors that the players in the managed care health system are looking for is the quality of services that will be provided to them. It has been noted that the managed care organizations have taken a completely new shift today. These organizations are led by profit-making organizations, and their main aim is to promote the main interests of their shareholders, which are to make profits. There are a lot of doubts today on whether the managed care organizations are mainly concerned with providing quality care, or they are only involved in the provisions of services so that they can make profits. The issue has arisen for some time since it has been identified that there are quality issues among the managed care organizations. On the other hand, there has been the introduction of new systems where the providers are rewarded so that they can promote efficiency in the health care organizations (O 'Kane & Barton, 2015). Through this trend, the providers who have the highest cost savings are given some incentives. However, this has been accompanied by some negative results on the side of the consumers (Blazej, 2014). The consumers or the partners are at the receiving end since these organizations are now whaling some

The healthcare industry is always working to find innovative ways to make care affordable while delivering an acceptable level of medical treatment. The cost of medical care is constantly on the rise therefore difficult to create a foolproof system that can competently provide care at a reasonable price. Manage care programs were designed to handle these issues simultaneously yet they have yet to create a perfect system that will be appropriate for everyone. The U.S. healthcare system needs an overall to find a technique that will be suitable for its consumers. Even with managed care service in place the industry still falls short of being able to satisfy the majority of the people.

As a graduate student offering health care administration, one of the key issues relevant to this field is managed care and quality care. Most of the concerns for the last several decades focused on the cost of increase in health care delivery. Focus during this age was on physician patient relationship dependence; where services provided were based on ‘fee for services’ or what is called an unmanaged or traditional form of health care delivery. With this system, patients were charged based on the nature of sickness including hours spent. Because the system was a source of income to physicians, they inclined to spend quality time giving quality care to achieve a positive result if not negative using effective evidence based system (where patients were allowed to bring to counter their own personal preference and unique concerns as well as expectations which includes values). But the question still remains that, how many people were able to afford this kind of health cost? Obviously the average and the unemployed couldn’t afford and this became a burden for the public, because the structure was favoring only the rich in terms of cost and quality of care. The continuity of this issue (unmanaged care) made America one of the highest health care costs in the world with about 60% to 100% higher than most other countries because only few people could purchase it (health cost). And as those costs approached, it then exceeded to 14% overall economic output, thus increasing pressure

The need to supply quality health care for all U.S citizens has been a major concern for the people as well as the government from early on in our nation’s history. The ever-increasing costs of health care led to many attempts to institute national health systems, but these attempts were defeated and the development of private health insurance was instituted. Although this has brought health care coverage to many citizens it has left many people without coverage, and has not affected the cost of health care as hoped. More attempts to institute a national health system have been attempted and met with defeat, but according to (Quadagno, 2004) "legislation was successfully passed in 1965 to provide governmental financing for health care services for the elderly and the indigent” this was the introduction of the government programs Medicare and Medicaid. Even with these government programs in place the cost of health care still rose at an astounding rate and other attempts to control costs were implemented. Although fee-for-service insurance plans were still the dominant type of insurance, pre-paid medical services had been around for a long time and this type of insurance caught on