Summit Oaks Hospital Case Study

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Choice #2 - Summit Oaks Hospital Summit Oaks Hospital is a privately owned, for-profit hospital located in the affluent community of Summit, New Jersey. It is a 38-bed facility and is not associated with any other healthcare provider. Summit Oaks provides psychiatric as well as chemical dependency inpatient as well as outpatient treatment for both children and adults (Summit Oaks Hospital, 2016). Summit Oaks does not provide any other healthcare services; therefore, any patient requiring medical treatment secondary to psychiatric or chemical dependency issues is transferred to another hospital for treatment. Founded in 1902 the hospital has provided treatment to individuals in the entertainment industry as well as local citizen. …show more content…

Yet, this policy would also allow them to decline services for patients who possess policies that would not sufficiently cover the cost of treatment and/or contain a no balance billing clause. Managed Care Contracts Managed care organizations and Summit Oaks would have established important objectives between what services they consider essential and those services which are desirable (Kongstvedt, 2013). Also as part of the managed care contract, a solid basis for a working relationship would have been established between Summit Oaks and the managed care organization (MCO). The would include CHOICE #2 – SUMMIT OAKS HOSPITAL …show more content…

Furthermore, a MCO many times considers mental health and substance abuse services as a carve-out from the standard surgical and medical aspects of a policy. An understanding of this carve-out between Summit Oaks and the MCO established as the point of contracting with the MCO would be highly beneficial both parties by eliminating policy unknowns. In addition, many MCOs do not use straight charges with hospitals but instead, per diems. Per diems are one fee for each day of hospital service without consideration of adjustments (Kongstvedt, 2013). While successful per diems depend on predicting services, this would be especially beneficial to this psychiatric hospital and it could use service-specific per diems; therefore, not needing to negotiate any outliers which occur. The presence of these elements enables both Summit Oaks and the PPO, EPO, CDHP, IDS or other managed care organization to manage the payment and costs of services. While in the past MCOs could have a reduced lifetime limit for mental health benefits versus other medical services, the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 requires that the lifetime dollar limit be the same as for other service areas (Hebert, 2009). This also makes contracting with MCOs more desirable than they may have been in the past. Self-Pay

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