This comprehensive book includes a complete glossary of managed care terms, acronyms, and initialisms to help health care workers navigate this complex vocabulary. Written in plain English, even the lay person can understand and apply the terminology. In addition to providing definitions, the book includes extensive cross references to help the user understand not only the basic terminology, but also related concepts. Additionally, three useful appendices provide information on common medical associations, important medical journals, and health related internet sites. This comprehensive book is a must for health care workers who want to provide optimal care to their clients by communicating more clearly and effectively.

Integrating Social Care into the Delivery of Health Care: Moving Upstream to Improve the Nation's Health was released in September 2019, before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in March 2020. Improving social conditions remains critical to improving health outcomes, and integrating social care into health care delivery is more relevant than ever in the context of the pandemic and increased strains placed on the U.S. health care system. The report and its related products ultimately aim to help improve health and health equity, during COVID-19 and beyond. The consistent and compelling evidence on how social determinants shape health has led to a growing recognition throughout the health care sector that improving health and health equity is likely to depend â€" at least in part â€" on mitigating adverse social determinants. This recognition has been bolstered by a shift in the health care sector towards value-based payment, which incentivizes improved health outcomes for persons and populations rather than service delivery alone. The combined result of these changes has been a growing emphasis on health care systems addressing patients' social risk factors and social needs with the aim of improving health outcomes. This may involve health care systems linking individual patients with government and community social services, but important questions need to be answered about when and how health care systems should integrate social care into their practices and what kinds of infrastructure are required to facilitate such activities. Integrating Social Care into the Delivery of Health Care: Moving Upstream to Improve the Nation's Health examines the potential for integrating services addressing social needs and the social determinants of health into the delivery of health care to achieve better health outcomes. This report assesses approaches to social care integration currently being taken by health care providers and systems, and new or emerging approaches and opportunities; current roles in such integration by different disciplines and organizations, and new or emerging roles and types of providers; and current and emerging efforts to design health care systems to improve the nation's health and reduce health inequities.

"The Nation has lost sight of its public health goals and has allowed the system of public health to fall into 'disarray'," from The Future of Public Health. This startling book contains proposals for ensuring that public health service programs are efficient and effective enough to deal not only with the topics of today, but also with those of tomorrow. In addition, the authors make recommendations for core functions in public health assessment, policy development, and service assurances, and identify the level of government--federal, state, and local--at which these functions would best be handled.

This thoroughly revised and updated book provides a strategic and operational resource for use in planning and decision-making. The Handbook enables readers to fine-tune operation strategies by providing updates on critical managed care issues, insights to the complex managed care environment, and methods to gain and maintain cost-efficient, high quality health services. With 30 new chapters, it includes advice from managers in the field on how to succeed in every aspect of managed care including: quality management, claims and benefits administration, and managing patient demand. The Handbook is considered to be the standard resource for the managed care industry.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) administers two programs that provide benefits based on disability: the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. This report analyzes health care utilizations as they relate to impairment severity and SSA's definition of disability. Health Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination identifies types of utilizations that might be good proxies for "listing-level" severity; that is, what represents an impairment, or combination of impairments, that are severe enough to prevent a person from doing any gainful activity, regardless of age, education, or work experience.

The anthrax incidents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the spotlight on the nation's public health agencies, placing it under an unprecedented scrutiny that added new dimensions to the complex issues considered in this report. The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century reaffirms the vision of Healthy People 2010, and outlines a systems approach to assuring the nation's health in practice, research, and policy. This approach focuses on joining the unique resources and perspectives of diverse sectors and entities and challenges these groups to work in a concerted, strategic way to promote and protect the public's health. Focusing on diverse partnerships as the framework for public health, the book discusses: The need for a shift from an individual to a population-based approach in practice, research, policy, and community engagement. The status of the governmental public health infrastructure and what needs to be improved, including its interface with the health care delivery system. The roles nongovernment actors, such as academia, business, local communities and the media can play in creating a healthy nation. Providing an accessible analysis, this book will be important to public health policy-makers and practitioners, business and community leaders, health advocates, educators and journalists.

Managed Care

This collection of readings is a companion To The Essentials of Managed Health Care, Second Edition. These articles, taken from four Aspen journals (Managed Care Quarterly, Health Care Management Review, Journal of Health Care Finance, and Quarterly Management in Health Care) provide indepth coverage of key issues and topics in managed care.

Peter Kongstvedt provides an authoritative and comprehensive overview of the key strategic, tactical, and operational aspects of managed health care and health insurance. With a primary focus on the commercial sector, the book also addresses managed health care in Medicare, Medicaid, and military medical care. An historical overview and a discussion of taxonomy and functional differences between different forms of managed health care provide the framework for the operational aspects of the industry as well.