Reforming a system of care: the Arizona experiment

In the aftermath of a successful class-action suit on behalf of seriously mentally ill patients, the Arizona legislature set into law five pilot projects to test a proposed system of care based on clinical teams, prepaid funding, and independent evaluations. The author, who drafted the proposal for the new system, discusses the system's principles and how the system's components will function under them. He then discusses some of the system's strengths and the difficulties it may encounter.