Utilization management as a cost-containment strategy - Cost-Containment Issues, Methods, and Experiences

Health Care Financing Review, Annual, 1991 by Howard L. Bailit, Cary Sennett

Introduction

The great majority of Americans are now enrolled in privately or publicly funded health plan that use utilization management (UM) programs as a primary cost-containment strategy. This includes 90 percent of privately insured employees and all Medicare and Medicaid participants (Sullivan and Rice, 1991). Considering that few employees were enrolled in these programs until the middle 1980s, the growth of UM has been phenomenal.

Now that UM programs are established, it is an appropriate time to assess their impact and to reflect on their future role in the health care delivery system. There is an extensive descriptive literature on UM (mainly for inpatient care), and a small but growing of scientifically rigorous analytic work evaluating its impact on utilization, costs, and quality. This literature is briefly summarized here.

The primary concern of this article is the future of UM. The two critical question of concern are: Will externally run public and private UM programs continue? If so, what changes are expected in UM operations over the next 5 to 10 years? This article focuses on the UM program sponsored publicly for Medicare, or peer review organization (PROs), and those operated by UM companies that do not have a contractual relationship with physician and hospitals. UM programs used in health maintenance organizations (HMOs), preferred provider organizations (PROs), and other network-based managed care plans are excluded because their effects are confounded by the other intrinsic cost-containment features.

Utilization management programs

UM as used in this article is: "... a set of techniques used by or on behalf of purchasers of health benefits to manage health care costs by influencing patient care decision-making through case-by-case assessment of the appropriateness of care ..." (Institute of Medicare Committee on Utilization Management by Third Parties, 1989).

The rationale for UM rests on three underlying assumptions:

* In a predominantly fee-for-service payment system

there is considerable unnecessary and inefficient care

provided to patients. * Unnecessary care can be controlled, saving substantial

amounts of money and improving the quality of care. * The cost of operating UM systems is small compared

with the savings.

Extensive literature suggests that perhaps 10 to 30 percent of diagnostic tests, procedures, and hospital admissions are unnecessary (Chassin et al., 1987; Greenspan et al., 1988; Siu et al., 1986; Winslow et al., 1988a; Winslow et al., 1988b). Whether or not UM can control unnecessary care and do it efficiently is addressed in this article.

Two general aspects of effectiveness are considered: Medical care utilization and costs at the program and system levels and the quality of care. (A brief description of the major UM programs and the history of UM can be found in the Technical note.)

Individual program utilization and costs

Inpatient medical and surgical review

The impact of PROs on hospital utilization is unknown, but it may be limited because only 2 to 3 percent of admissions are denied (Vibbert 1991b). On the other hand, the 1983 diagnosis-related-group (DRG) payment system gives hospitals the incentive to admit Medicare patients more frequently. Nonetheless, Medicare admissions have declined during the past 7 years. Some investigators have posted that this decline can be attributed, in part, to the PRO program (Christensen, 1991; Sloan, Morrisey, and Valvona, 1988).

Two studies have examined the effectiveness of private sector, phone-based hospital admissions and length-of-stay certification programs using multivariate statistics and before-and-after control group design. One study reported reductions in medical, surgical, and psychiatric bed days per 1,000 employees of 8 percent and in total health care costs of 6 to 8 percent (Feldstein, Wickizer, and Wheeler, 1988; Wickizer, Wheeler, and Feldstein, 1989; Wickizer, 1990, Wickizer, 1991). Another study of medical and surgical admissions showed a reduction in bed days of 34 per 1,000 employees per quarter, or 13 percent. Inpatient expense were lowered by 8 percent, and total health care costs by 4.5 percent (Khandker and Manning, 1992).

Compared with telephone-based hospital review, reductions of another 6 percent in bed days per 1,000 employees and 9 percent in net costs are reported when the need for hospital admissions and continued stay is reviewed onsite (in the hospital) by nurses (Smith and Gotowka, 1991).

Psychiatric and substance abuse

Because Medicare has limited mental health coverage, PROs have little involvement in managing psychiatric and substance abuse utilization. For private sector, telephone based UM programs, the one published multivariate study found reductions in length of stay of 20 percent, in admission rates of 13 percent, and in net inpatient costs of 16.6 percent (Gotowka and Smith, 1991).

Medical and surgical procedures

Until recently, PROs prospectively reviewed up to 10 surgical procedures using explicit criteria. There is little information available on the impact of these reviews, but because they have been discontinued, it is apparent that they were not considered to be effective.