Spragins expands her award-winning Newsweek story, "America's Best HMOs," with this excellent work designed to give people easy methods for finding high-quality managed healthcare plans, specifically health maintenance organizations (HMOs), and to help high-quality care thrive. Across the country, the almost daily press announcements of new fill-in-the-blank HMOs, especially those targeted to the huge market of Medicare beneficiaries, understandably confuse consumers with the dizzying array of choices presented by this complex healthcare option. Topics succinctly presented cover the best HMOs in each state, the 11 leading indicators of excellence, why Medicare HMOs are different and how to pick one, where to find yardsticks of quality, and how to challenge a medical decision and get an HMO to cover what a consumer needs. The intent here is to help consumers reward those excellent plans by migrating to them, thus supporting the future of top-notch healthcare. Spragins has done a remarkable job of translating for lay listeners highly specialized material more likely to be found in professional trade journals, but the numerous sources of available key quality indicators of HMOs would be far easier for consumers to access if their URLs were included. With the continuing growth in managed-care health plans, all public libraries are encouraged to offer this resource, along with its corresponding hard copy.ADale Farris, Groves, TX
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Don't join an HMO without this book. Ellyn Spragins is the first word on picking your HMO and getting it to perform for you. -- Jane Bryant Quinn, Newsweek
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