Uneasy alliances: managed care plans formed by safety-net providers.

Promising practices: how leading safety-net plans are managing the care of Medicaid clients.

Health plans formed by safety-net providers serve large numbers of Medicaid beneficiaries. Through a series of case studies, we examined the care management tools used by leading safety-net plans. These plans do not rely on the coercive, command-style tools of managed care. They rely instead on tools that emphasize partnership with providers: sharing data about practice patterns, using provider...

Effects of health system changes on safety-net providers.

Growing competition in health care markets and Medicaid managed care, combined with cuts in government funds that subsidize care to the uninsured, are challenging the viability of the safety net. In response to these pressures, "safety-net" providers in fifteen communities are integrating vertically and horizontally, contracting with or forming managed care plans, and seeking to attract paying ...

How are safety-net providers faring under Medicaid managed care?

Health Care Markets, the Safety Net and Access to Care Among the Uninsured

This product is part of the RAND Health working paper series. RAND working papers are intended to share researchers' latest findings and to solicit informal peer review. They have been approved for circulation by RAND Health but have not been formally edited or peer reviewed. Unless otherwise indicated, working papers can be quoted and cited without permission of the author, provided the source...

Health care markets, the safety net, and utilization of care among the uninsured.

OBJECTIVE To quantify the relationship between utilization of care among the uninsured and the structure of the local health care market and safety net. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING Nationally representative data from the 1996 to 2000 waves of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) linked to data from multiple secondary sources. STUDY DESIGN We separately analyze outpatient care utilizat...