Case studies of collaboration between family planning agencies and managed care organizations

To learn more about collaboration between family planning agencies and managed care plans, telephone interviews were conducted with staff at ten sites across the country, including offices of Planned Parenthood and other agencies. These examples of collaboration indicate that the development of each partnership is influenced by contextual factors such as the penetration of managed care into the local market, the patient profile of the clinics, government regulations, and the political environment. Although establishing relationships with family planning agencies is often not a high priority for the health plan organizations, they prefer to deal with networks of providers when the need for a family planning referral arises. Family planning agencies are increasingly moving toward expansion of services into primary care to make themselves more attractive to managed care plans. Developing strategies for sharing information while maintaining patient confidentiality represents an important challenge to family planning agencies as they move toward integration with managed care plans. Family planning providers also face obstacles because they are not usually organized to handle the complex financial and contractual issues that come with collaboration.