Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York

Today in the health care field, one must expect the unexpected. In this respect, HMOs are no more immune than any other sector of the health care market place. In fact, one could argue that in managing an HMO in the present environment, one is at the very eye of the storm. Ten years ago, no one in the HMO industry could have realistically expected that national HMO enrollments would be in excess of 21 million by 1986, that there would be competition between as many as 20 HMOs in a single market, or that the fastest growing segment of the HMO field would be HMOs representing investor-owned, IPA-based chains. Whether change of this magnitude was ever anticipated is not the real issue; rather, the issue is how organizations meet the challenge of change and whether they succeed or fail. The following article describes the Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York (HIP), a long established HMO, and its plans to maintain its market share in this changing health care environment.