Managed Care or Texas Cotton and the New Deal

Managed Care: Strategies, Networks, and Management

Author: Montague Brown

This collection provides the health care manager with the latest and best thinking about the dynamic field of managed care. Here are expert advice and insightful perspectives on strategies and structures for managed care, the roles of hospitals and physicians, and management issues. Indispensable for providers, insurers, buyers, and anyone seeking the techniques, methods, linkages, and alliances needed to make managed care succeed.

Marten M. Kernis

Edited by a recognized leader in the field of managed care, this book is a compendium of 25 articles published between 1986 and 1993 in Health Care Management Review. The authors of the papers are distinguished scholars and professionals in the field. The papers themselves are arranged in a logical, interesting manner. In light of the current national discussion of health care reform and the directions the proposed policies seem to be taking, the book seems to be designed to provide a single source for selected important previously published papers about managed care. The book is not a handbook for managers of managed care, but instead it is meant to serve as a background for those who currently have policy-making responsibilities and for scholars who will have recognized Health Care Management Review as a vehicle for publication of related papers. The audience is anticipated to include policymakers, managers, scholars, and students of health care management in general and managed care in particular. There are no photographs. Black-and-white figures, graphs, and tables are included in several of the sections. Because the papers have been published over a seven-year time span by many different authors, some references are dated, and there is some variation in the quality of selected bibliographies and selected articles. For persons interested in managed care, the book provides easy reference to a sample of previously published papers. Because the earlier papers contain older data, the reader must be certain to supplement these readings with more current information. The book is most useful to those who have limited access to the journalfrom which the articles were taken.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer: Marten M. Kernis, PhD (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Description: Edited by a recognized leader in the field of managed care, this book is a compendium of 25 articles published between 1986 and 1993 in Health Care Management Review. The authors of the papers are distinguished scholars and professionals in the field. The papers themselves are arranged in a logical, interesting manner.
Purpose: In light of the current national discussion of health care reform and the directions the proposed policies seem to be taking, the book seems to be designed to provide a single source for selected important previously published papers about managed care. The book is not a handbook for managers of managed care, but instead it is meant to serve as a background for those who currently have policy-making responsibilities and for scholars who will have recognized Health Care Management Review as a vehicle for publication of related papers.
Audience: The audience is anticipated to include policymakers, managers, scholars, and students of health care management in general and managed care in particular.
Features: There are no photographs. Black-and-white figures, graphs, and tables are included in several of the sections. Because the papers have been published over a seven-year time span by many different authors, some references are dated, and there is some variation in the quality of selected bibliographies and selected articles.
Assessment: For persons interested in managed care, the book provides easy reference to a sample of previously published papers. Because the earlier papers contain older data, the reader must be certain to supplement these readings with more current information. The book is most useful to those who have limited access to the journal from which the articles were taken.

Rating

3 Stars from Doody

Table of Contents:

	Preface
	Acknowledgments
	Getting To Go in Managed Care	3
	HCMR Diaglogue: Managed Care	17
	Vertical Integration in Health Services: Theory and Managerial Implications	27
	Vertical Integration: Exploration of a Popular Strategic Concept	41
	The Economic Transformation of American Health Insurance: Implications for the Hospital Industry	55
	Health Maintenance Organizations: Improvements in the Regulatory Environment	63
	Hospital-Health Care Plan Affiliations: Considerations for Strategy Design	79
	Strategies Employed by HMOs To Achieve Hospital Discounts: A Case Study of Seven HMOs	91
	The Growth and Effects of Hospital Selective Contracting	99
	Contracts between Hospitals and Health Maintenance Organizations	107
	Product Lines in a Complex Marketplace: Matching Organizational Strategy to Buyer Behavior	121
	A Hospital Administrator's Guide to Successful HMO Negotiations	127
	Critical Factors for Successful Hospital-Based Case Management	131
	Factors for Success: Capitated Primary Physicians in Medicare HMOs	141
	Lessons Learned Hiring HMO Medical Directors	147
	Critical Factors in Recruiting Health Maintenance Organization Physicians	157
	Career Paths of Physician Executives	169
	Physician Managers: Personal Characteristics versus Institutional Demands	179
	The Secret of Medical Management	185
	Impact of IPAs on Fee-for-Service Medical Groups	193
	Determinants of HMO Success: The Case of Complete Health	205
	An Assessment of Employers' Experiences with HMOs: Factors That Make a Difference	217
	Management Information Systems: Their Role in the Marketing Activities of HMOs	225
	Controlling Disenrollment in Health Maintenance Organizations	231
	A Model for Understanding Benefit Segmentation in Preventive Health Care	239
	Index	251
	About the Editor	259

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Texas, Cotton, and the New Deal

Author: Keith Joseph Volanto

"In this book, Keith J. Volanto relates the story of the New Deal's efforts to aid Texas cotton farmers, specifically with the production-control policies introduced by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). He explores the reasons the AAA cotton programs in Texas were instituted, the implementation problems the AAA encountered and how they were resolved, and the results of the programs. He draws conclusions concerning how well Texans benefited from the AAA cotton programs and about those who were actually harmed by them. In addition, he also examines the role of Texas politicians and bureaucrats in formulating the policies in Washington and the importance of Texas to New Deal cotton policy broadly." Volanto's study of the AAA cotton programs in Texas is an important case study not only of agriculture policy but also of the New Deal itself. The AAA provides an example of how the New Deal attempted to solve a national problem in a largely experimental fashion.

American Historical Review

Overall, this is a strong offering that looks through a narrow lens at a period of dramatic transformation in Texas agriculture.