Managed care: the benefits and implications for clinical practice

Managed care is a system of coordinating and structuring health care for use by all members of the multidisciplinary team. It is intended to provide quality, cost-effective care that is research- or evidence-based. With limited resources available to the NHS and constantly increasing healthcare costs, a balance needs to be reached between quality and cost. Managed care progammes have the potential to achieve this. This article describes the concept of managed care and some of the tools used in managed care programmes. The benefits of adopting such a system are discussed and the issues that should be considered before its implementation examined.