Patients' and providers' perceptions of outpatient treatment termination in a managed behavioral health organization

A common complaint about managed care is that treatment decisions of patients and providers are frequently altered by concurrent review of ongoing outpatient treatment. The objective of this study was to examine this perception from the perspectives of patients and providers.

A total of 190 patients and their providers were surveyed about the reason that outpatient treatment was terminated. The sample was randomly drawn from completed outpatient treatment episodes of a large national managed behavioral health organization.

In more than three-quarters of the cases, outpatient treatment ended because patients and providers agreed that treatment goals were partially or completely met. Only 5 percent of patients and 3 percent of providers said that treatment ended because the managed care organization denied ongoing treatment. Agreement between patient-provider pairs was generally poor regarding the perceived reason for termination, except when termination was attributed to concurrent review by the managed behavioral health organization.

In this study of a single large managed behavioral health organization, outpatient treatment was most likely to end based on the decisions of patients and providers rather than utilization review decisions.