Navigate your way over to DB’s Medical Rants to read Robert Centor on the VA doing better than managed care plans in a study of care for diabetics. Here’s the AP Version and the study abstract. Essentially back in 1998-9 the VA’s diabetics got statistically better quality care than a matched selection of patients in managed care plans. This tends to make me believe that there’s still not that much care-management going on in the general “commercial” population.

Now the “managed care” population is not a homogeneous blob. You can’t tell which plans these patients were in from the article, but some were in Hawaii and Northern California (where Kaiser is 50% & 30% of the whole market respectively) while others were in Indiana, which basically never had any managed care. So my suspicion is that the rates of care is a factor more of the delivery environment than the type of insurance coverage. But nonetheless, hats off to the VA for this care. (Right, that’s enough praise for that evil socialized medicine….)

However, some of the uglier traits of “Managed Care” (such as utilization review and physician hassling) which were dying out in the late 1990s (the time analyzed in the study) are apparently making a slight comeback, according to this recent HSC report in Health Affairs. There’s even the odd case of care denial that makes me fell that we’re back in 1996, such as Cigna recently doing a flip-flop after denying payment for an experimental procedure. I’m almost expecting $93m judgments against Healthnet with Mailk Hassan making cameo appearances in stretch limos and Time magazine.

I just get the vague sense (based only on anecdotal observation) that the DSM/care management trend is becoming slightly more important again for health plans. But it’s nowhere near as important as getting rid of the bad risks up front, as Aetna has shown its shareholders. Is there a real trend towards care management from health plans? Or is it just medical directors talking shop over at the DM Forum? Comments on a postcard please!