Academic medicine and managed care: seeking common ground

The authors report the highlights of a one-day symposium, "Academic Medicine and Managed Care: Seeking Common Ground," sponsored in early 1997 by Tulane University Medical Center. The meeting was held to foster better understanding of the gap between managed care organizations (MCOs) and academic health centers (AHCs) and to define their common ground. There were 62 participants, mainly executives froin AHCs and MCOs, plus government officials and policy researchers interested in the interface of academic medicine and managed care. The participants agreed that there are indeed some common areas in which the two types of organizations can develop programs and interests that serve the missions of both. These include (1) a commitment to high-quality health care, objectively measured by outcomes; (2) issues of "customer service"; (3) certain areas of research (e.g., examining outcomes of medical interventions; measuring cost and cost-effectiveness; measuring quality of care); and (4) preventive medicine, an area in which both AHCs and MCOs are still relatively weak. On the other hand, large elements of AHCs' basic missions of education and research are not seen by MCOs as areas for developing a common agenda. Participants agreed that AHCs must do their best to improve and demonstrate the quality of their care, address the challenges of the market (i.e., take "customer service" seriously), address the issue of how many specialists and how many generalists should be trained, and define the cost of each of their missions. On the other hand, managed care must acknowledge that the missions of AHCs greatly benefit patients and society. Participants agreed that all approaches to AHC-MCO interfaces must be flexible and local, that common ground does exist, and that understanding can grow between these two kinds of organizations if acrimonious exchanges are avoided and serious efforts are made to work together for solutions.