Assessment practices in the era of managed care: current status and future directions

This article reviews recent research to determine the impact of managed health care policies on assessment practices of psychologists. The author presents findings from several test use surveys of the 1990s, summarizes available empirical data on the managed care-assessment nexus, and shares his personal views on the effects of managed care constraints on practice and training in clinical psychology. Investigations to date seem to indicate that managed care has adversely affected testing and assessment practices with the result that clinicians are performing less testing overall and are restricted in terms of their pool of assessment instruments. Personality assessment appears to be most affected with a shift away from lengthy measures toward more brief, symptom-focused testing instruments.