Managed Mental Health Care Managed

Managed Mental Health Care

MANAGED CARE in the FIELD of MENTAL HEALTH

While the concept of managed care has been utilized in the field of medical science for many years, it is a relatively new concept in the field of mental health. While many mental health providers and insurance companies move to the area of managed care several issues of concern rise to the surface and are being addressed.

One of the chief concerns is how managed care organizations are going to be able to provide comprehensive mental health services while at the same time keeping costs down. To answer this concern mental health providers are working to maintain the highest possible standards of ethics in all areas of practice (Managed Care (http://www.thenationalcoalition.org/eleven.html).

In addition, the field of mental health, for the most part has always been a reactive field. If a patient becomes depressed, or has other mental health issues, they are dealt with as they come up. The premise of managed care is that preventative care today, reduces the need and cost of needed care tomorrow.

The conflict is most serious with case rates and capitation in which the professional is paid a set fee regardless of how much treatment the patient is given. Competitive mental health case rates may be as low as $200 per patient, regardless of whether the patient is seen once or fifty times. If patients are seen for as few as an average of eight one-hour sessions, simple arithmetic shows that a $200 case rate yields $25 per session (Managed Care (http://www.thenationalcoalition.org/eleven.html)."

Because the above scenario is a fact of managed care it is even more important to provide preventative mental health care that will provide early steps to recovery and success before the problem becomes so large that it requires many sessions to resolve.

The trio of ambulatory care, mental health care and alternative therapies assist in this process of providing quality care at low cost by using a combination of techniques.

One significant method that this can be accomplished with is the use of alternative methods and therapies. For many years therapists practiced from Sigmund Freud's teachings which believed that for therapy to be effective it must take many sessions over a several years period. Today, however, the majority of practicing therapist use a method that is solution based. The issue is to find resolution for the immediate problem without trying to ascertain what happened in the patient's childhood and the years leading to the problem that caused it (Behavioral Health Services and Prevention (http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/publications/allpubs/SMA00-3437/SMA00-3437ch3.asp).

A solution based therapy can be completed in several sessions and the person also learns coping tools for identifying and changing problems that appear in the future.

This method is done by having patients come to therapy on an outpatient basis, thereby saving overhead costs as well as session costs.

In addition the three entities can work together toward preventative mental health care by identifying and reducing risk factors whenever possible.

Risk factors and protective factors are also central to an understanding of prevention in the mental health and substance abuse arenas. The presence of risk factors is associated with an increased potential to develop a mental health or substance abuse problem. Protective factors reduce the potential to develop these problems. An at-risk individual may benefit from the presence of protective factors. Current research seeks to determine how risk factors that cause problems can be changed through preventive interventions (Mrazek & Haggerty, 1994) as well as to identify, maintain, and strengthen protective factors (Behavioral Health Services and Prevention (http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/publications/allpubs/SMA00-3437/SMA00-3437ch3.asp)."