Managed Care And Public Health Essay

I would go with 2nd editorial because in 1st editorial the author mainly concentrated on differences between managed care and public health and he mostly talked about the disadvantages to public health departments due to managed care systems such as, decline in grants . Whereas 2nd editorial clearly explains about the advantages of collaboration between Managed Care and Public Health. It also clearly explains how managed care world and public health antagonize each other.
The fact is that managed care and public health are co-dependent in the most straight forward sense of the term: they need each other to get the job done. Most of the public health practices such as immunization, cancer screening, heart disease risk management, injury prevention requires collaboration with health care delivery system such as, managed care system.
Even current public health challenges such as, obesity, elder health, requires participation from health care providers as community leaders.

CDC laid out recommendations along with state and local health departments , employers, managed care industry and provided examples about successful collaboration between managed care and public health in providing quality care, which are grouped into three areas, Assessment , Interventions and Implementation.

Assessment: HEDIS (Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set) is an important tool for assessing needs and progress, which was developed by National Committee of Quality Assurance (NCQA).
HEDIS serves as a report card on quality of care in Managed care systems because managed care organizations depend on their HEDIS scores for accreditation. For example, the Missouri Department of Health is assessing the quality of care provided by managed care plans and guide Missouri consumers in choosing among these plans.

Interventions: The choice of interventions is another area for collaboration between public health agencies and managed care organizations, and “The Guide to Community Preventive Services” is a good example of successful collaboration at the national level. The guide describes about a task force which consists of 15 members, including 2 from managed care organizations and 1 from a national organization of employers interested in health. A good local example of collaboration in choosing interventions is a diabetes program in San Diego, where public health interventions helped in early recognition and prevention of
disease.

Implementation: Implementation of preventive activities. For example, the CDC has recently undertaken a national partnership with managed care organizations and employers to increase the use of influenza and pneumococcal immunizations by adults. The national partners began developing state and local collaborations.

These are some examples of successful collaboration of Managed care and Public health. We can do this more efficiently, effectively, and thoroughly, through a closer collaboration than we currently demonstrate between public health partners, government, and all parts of our health care delivery system, including managed care.