Managed Medicare: an overview for the primary care physician

Medicare is looking to managed care to help solve its financial burden. Because managed care plans offer a number of advantages for Medicare enrollees, the number of plans and of enrollees are increasing dramatically. With some exceptions, the Medicare population appears to do as well or better in HMOs as in fee-for-service care, despite differences in utilization of services. For the primary care physician, the key to success in managed Medicare is finding and aggressively managing your frail or near frail patients. Basic tools for survival are the use of prevention strategies, screening of enrollees and targeting for needed services, geriatric assessment, use of alternate care settings to avoid or limit costly hospital care, and monitoring of medication use for compliance and adverse reactions.