Over the past several years, healthcare has been profoundly
altered by the growth of managed care. Because managed care
integrates the financing and delivery of healthcare services,
it dramatically alters the roles and relationships among
providers, payers, and patients. While analysis of this
change has focused on whether and how managed care can
control costs, an increasingly important concern among
healthcare providers and recipients is the impact of
managed care on the physician–patient relationship.
The literature includes a number of theoretical articles
and anecdotal accounts of managed care's impact on
the doctor–patient relationship, but little data
have been collected and analyzed. We designed a survey
for distribution to Wisconsin physicians to analyze the
prevalence and types of managed care arrangements in the
state, and the impact of these arrangements on physicians
and their relationships with patients.