What Is The Future Of Managed Care?
California is often the place where many innovative healthcare programs originate. I wrote a letter to our American Podiatric Medical Association president 15 years ago, explaining the concerns I had with managed care and how it was affecting the foot and ankle specialist in California. He wrote back and noted that he did not think this would affect the rest of the country, and that it is an isolated problem in California. After 15 years, we have seen the spread and evolution of HMOs, and the challenges this has created for the doctors who provide this type of care. I believe we will see a higher level of oversight in our patient outcomes, practice patterns and patient satisfaction. This can be helpful to the practitioner if he or she is open-minded, and uses the information to help improve patient care. It is impossible to achieve a “perfect” outcome for each patient and it is impossible to keep every patient happy. However, we can continue to strive toward this goal. The increased us
