The use of treatment contracts to reduce medicaid costs of a difficult patient

Abstract

This paper discusses the use of treatment contracts to manage the medical system use by a patient who made frequent and unnecessary outpatient and emergency room visits. The patient's progress was monitored, using a computerized Medicaid billing system which provided monthly summaries of the patient's outpatient and emergency room visits, the costs of these services and the number of taxi rides per month. The costs of the treatment program were estimated from the data and mental health center records. Computerized Medicaid systems have potential usefulness as outcome measures for behavioral treatment programs.