[Solved] Health Services the US Care plan

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[Solved] Health Services the US Care plan

This paper revolves around health services the US Care Plan and you are required to present a report on the types of the plan and standardization of the care plans. You are required to include APA style reference list for authentication of your report.  

Managed care for health services was introduced in 1930s and has constantly evolved over time. There are three main types of the plan; one is the Preferred Provider Organization (PPO), the others are Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) and Point of Service (POS). The difference among these plan types are based on the nature of health services provided. In HMO for example, one can only get health services from a physician within the network only. HMO health services are usually prepaid. On the other hand, PPOs comprise of doctors or hospitals who offer health services at a discounted rate in order to reduce cost of medical care. Subscribers of PPO make payments at service delivery other than prepaying and can consult outside the network at a higher cost as opposed to HMO. Connectively, POS are similar to PPOs but the difference emerges where one has to identify a primary care physician from the network. The major similarity among the three plan types is that all the plans involve collaboration with an insurer. Additionally, all the three plans offer financial incentives in order to attract subscribers (Kongstvedt, 2013, p. 21).

Standardization of the care plans is necessary in order to harmonize the quality of care as well as improving safety. For the health system to be able to measure and document the performance of the care management, all care networks should be standardized and adhere to common set of regulations (cited in Dana, 2014). The CMS website contains information regarding quality health services in America. The JC website holds information about healthcare organizations standards of performance and regulatory measures. On the other hand CARF website holds information regarding the best quality health service providers. Conclusively, CLIA website contains facts about offering quality laboratory health services as well as information relating to certification of laboratories. The parties that may be interested in these websites are the patients, healthcare practitioners as well as health service organizations. These websites have got information that is relevant to the needs of each party (Green, Bowie & McGraw, 2011, p. 30).