Health care coalitions: continuity and change

The purpose of this study has been to investigate how coalitions have changed during 1983-1986, to describe the current characteristics of coalitions, and to speculate about their future roles and likely evolution. Several insights emerge from the empirical findings of this study. First, the number of operational health care coalitions has greatly expanded over the last several years to the point where almost every state and metropolitan area of the country has at least one. Second, the service area of most coalitions is generally county-wide, although there has been significant growth in the number of coalitions that serve states. Third, coalitions are expanding their membership composition and including not only business members but also hospitals, physicians, insurance companies, and labor organizations. Fourth, coalitions are becoming more financially secure; most have annual cash budgets, and most rely on dues. Fifth, coalitions are increasingly hiring and using paid professional staff. Last, coalitions are expanding their agendas beyond investigating direct health care costs to examine some of the underlying issues (such as hospital and medical professional liability issues, the financing of uncompensated care, and ethical issues) and are developing programs to address them. For the near future, the extension of recent trends suggests how coalitions will look and function. Further down the road, health care coalitions may evolve into health care public/private policy forums or associations of health benefits managers and/or associations for managed care purchasers. In conclusion, the trends we documented and the projections of the future of coalitions appear to be in keeping with the summary perspective of John T. Dunlop (1987) who indicates: Coalitions provide a continuing forum in which parties become more interested and informed about health care costs, utilization and the problems and operations of the other participants. The discourse encourages a more extensive and informed development and sharing of data. Coalitions reflect and need to recognize the inevitable internal conflicts and interests of the constituent organizations. While some coalitions tend to flounder on internal conflicts and capacity to generate effective leadership; many are fruitfully addressing the hard issues of health care in a community, such as managed care, capitation payments, excess beds and capital requirements, and access to health care by the uninsured. As coalitions mature, beyond discourse and data, they are likely to concentrate on a few of the distinctive problems of their communities and the interaction within the health care environment to address these problems.