A combination reference, planning manual, and marketing guide, Psychological Assessment in Managed Care provides clinical psychologists with the expert guidance they need to successfully apply their unique psychometric and testing skills in the volatile world of managed behavioral health care. Clinicians and administrators alike will benefit from its detailed practical coverage of the new and emerging applications of both pencil-and-paper and automated psychological screening instruments.

A Psychologist's Proactive Guide to Managed Mental Health Care offers a concise overview of the evolution of managed mental health care and its impact on the working lives of clinical and counseling psychologists. Although many books explore the ramifications of managed care for psychotherapy, this is the first to take a broad perspective and examine the ways in which the new health care delivery system is affecting all aspects of practice--not just treatment but also assessment and training--as well as mental health research. The authors include some of the country's most noted psychologists with extensive experience in managed care. Their tone is optimistic rather than pessimistic; as they look at developments others have only deplored, they see potential roles and opportunities for growth for psychologists. In an era of dramatic health change, all those practitioners who are concerned about how to make managed care work for them rather than against them, will find this Guide essential reading. ALTERNATE BLURB A Psychologist's Proactive Guide to Managed Mental Health Care offers a concise overview of the evolution of managed mental health care and its impact on the working lives of clinical and counseling psychologists. While many books explore the ramifications of managed care for psychotherapy, this is the first to take a broad perspective and examine the ways in which the new health care delivery system is affecting all aspects of practice--not just treatment but also assessment and training--and mental health research as well.

In response to the many challenges facing mental health professionals in the era of managed care, this highly respected group of contributors from academia, managed care, and full-time clinical practice, outline the importance of personality assessment, particularly through the use of MMPI-2. Butcher and his colleagues argue that psychological assessment plays an indispensable role in managed care, both because it is an essential tool for evaluating the effectiveness of therapy and because of its significant contributions to the structuring and shortening of the process of therapy. By providing working examples of psychological treatment in the context of managed care, this book shows us that the most effective treatments use personality assessment as their foundation.

Written by a recognized expert in assessment employed by a large managed behavioral healthcare organization (MBHO), this book seeks to provide psychologists who rely on testing as an integral part of their practice, a guide on how to survive and thrive in the era of managed behavioral healthcare. It also offers ideas on how to capitalize on the opportunities that managed care presents to psychologists. The goal is to demonstrate that despite the tightening of the reins on authorizations for reimbursable testing, psychological testing can continue to play an important role in psychological practice and behavioral healthcare service delivery. The book presents ideas for: *increasing the likelihood of getting tests authorized by MBHOs; *using inexpensive/public domain assessment instruments; *ethically using psychological testing in MBHO settings; *capitalizing on the movement to integrate primary care and behavioral healthcare through the use of psychological testing; and *designing and implementing outcomes assessment systems within MBHO settings. Intended for practicing psychologists and other behavioral health practitioners employed by MBHOs in direct service delivery, care management or supervisory positions, as well as for graduate clinical or counseling psychology students who will most likely work in MBHO settings.

Publisher description

Looks at the issues facing mental health professionals in regards to managed care health networks.

The introduction of the concept of managed care into mental and physical health care appears to be a juggernaut of unparalleled impact. The two extremes of thought about this impact are (I) that managed care is a villainous foe to be resisted in order to bring back the earlier halcyon years of independence in practice decisions with greater reimbursement for psychologists' services or (2) that managed care is a laudatory attempt to restrain health care costs that are out of control and spiraling upward by rooting out mismanagement and reversing financial incentives to provide unnecessary care. The former view calls managed health care such names as "mangled care" and distributes bumper stickers stating "Just Say No to HMOs. " The latter view points to the slowdown of increases in health care expenditures and the enhancement of health care affordability and appropriateness for greater numbers of persons resulting from managed care cost-containment strategies and service review procedures. Mental or behavioral health care has been as strongly impacted as medical care under managed care. Where managed care has forced practitioners' attention to validated procedures and to examining previous wasteful practices, we ap plaud the movement. Where managed care has had adverse impact, we think there needs to be greater public, legal, and regulatory attention to its excesses and abuses.