Hey patel, it's ok. trust me, not everyone knows about HMOs. It is really one of those topics and concepts that is really easy to understand (bare with me...) once you have been explained the basics. When I was in my undergrad years, I didn't know what the heck was an HMO, PPO, POS, FFS, JCAHO, ACQA, HCFA, CMS, IOM, NIH, blah blah blah. Way to many acronyms, and one of the main problems is that once people learn what they mean, they love to use them, like it makes them sound like they know what they are talking about all of the sudden.
At one interview, I met a girl that was asked what an HMO was during her interview. She DID NOT KNOW. SHE WAS ACCEPTED! Yes, it may mean a lot to some people that think knowing about HMOs at this point in your life will predict if you are going to be a good doctor. what a crock...
My experience has shown me there are a lot of practicing physicians out there that don't know much about HMOs either, other than what it stands for, and that they have to negotiate contracts with them once a year or so. They don't understand the details of managed care's intentions. The bad thing about a lot of this is that most of what you hear about managed care consists of random stories from docs and patients that had a bad experience and blamed it on managed care, because that's what everyone does!!! I used to be extremely against managed care for these exact reasons.
OK, sorry, I don't want to get too far involved with this conversation, because this thread good go on forever. Yes, if you want to get involved with understanding every single aspect of what an HMO is, etc, it will take a great deal of time. But no one is expecting you, as an interviewee, to know how to solve the problems of skyrocketing costs in healthcare (which is one of the primary goals of managed care). The HMO is basically the purest form of managed care, and we are not going to figure out the solutions and future of managed care on these message boards. The primary difference between traditional health insurance (commonly known as fee-for-service) and HMOs, is that HMOs pay providers BEFORE the services are rendered, putting more of the risk associated with overutilization on the provider, rather than letting them do everything they deem necessary and pay for whatever they claim to be sufficient.
Feel free to get more detailed if you want, but I really can't be bothered. There are loads of websites out there that explain the basics to you as well as more details if you want. I trust you can search for them on your own. Try a book like healthcare for dummies (I really don't mean that in a derogatory manner, I am serious, these are really great books, I have some myself).
My point is to not let people on these boards get to you by saying you are naive by not knowing...that is just ridiculous. I didn't know about them four years ago. And now I do, so what? Am I going to be better at relating to and treating my patients because I know what it stands for and I've seen John Q? Heck No!
And finally, although I am somewhat shooting myself in the foot here, I wouldn't rely too much on learning about health economics from the average SDNer studying bio-whatever. There are a few in these parts that seem to be well versed in it, but learn about it on your own. Hopefully you can someday answer that question you first asked, "what are the solutions?". good luck.
sd77
