Managed Care

Of all the recent changes in health care, none have more dramatically affected both patients and care providers than managed care. Not only has it altered the way we pay for health care but also it has compelled a change in the way we approach health care, focusing increasingly on preventive care to reduce costs. In Managed Care, Dr. Margaret M. Conger and her colleagues examine the impact of managed care on nursing as a profession and nurses as individual caregivers. Organized into three sections, Managed Care looks at the nature of managed care, nursing strategies in acute care hospitals, and nursing strategies in community settings. Section I examines the evolution of managed care, definitions, and issues informing this method of service delivery, and nursing involvement in quality of care and case management. In Section II, the authors look at acute care settings, discussing the use of nurse extenders, advanced practice nursing, case management, automated clinical pathways, and outcome research. Section III addresses the community settings and explores case management, advanced practice roles in community health clinics, and collaboration in primary care settings. Managed Care will serve as an excellent course text on nursing and managed care, as well as being a useful introduction and shelf reference for professional nurses at all levels.