Medicare Pro's and Con's

This folder which will be added to the WWW is related to a graduate elective course that focuses on Managed Care as an overview. This assignment is to search the WWW for sites that are relevant to the topic of Medicare HMOs Pros & Cons. I have located 5 sites and 5 pages (one page from each site) that you may find helpful when attempting to narrow your search for information on the WWW for this topic. I began my first search through the Yahoo and did a search on Health Care Finance Administration since this is the regulatory body for Medicare and Risk contracts. This site lists information about HCFA including Medicare/Medicaid/Regulations/Press Info/Stats/ Research/ Gov't Sources. There is a good overview about Medicare including benefits handbook, frequent Q&A's, managed care resource info directories, and research and demonstrations. I included this page as a document. The next site through Yahoo I found by way of a search for the site Medscape. This site provides Topics/News/Journals/Exam Room categories. Under the News section there are Features, Briefs,Columns, and Editorials through Medical Tribune updates many related to the topic of Medicare and Managed Care. The third site is called Infoseek through a Lycos search on Medicare HMOs. There are several related topics to search for addtional sites. I chose Health & Medicine and then did a search for my topicic. The page I included is mainly focused on the Cons. The fourth site I found was through a review service called the Six Senses which evaluates and provides ratings for web sites in health care and medicine. This site is called MedAccess and it received a good rating and it had a lot of consumer focused information about HMOs which included info on pros and cons and report cards. The fifth site I found was called the Newspage which contained over 500 sources of news which are then categorized. I looked at Healthcare and Insurance categories for managed medical care and HMOs. I hope you find these sites useful.

Documents

Healthcare/page

a) THis page allowed for a search on my topic which provided a few relevant articles on managed medical care.
b) It contained a home page, index, register , seach and sources. General helathcare topics was the most helpful section.
c) I would rate this page with a 2 since it did require one to pre-register and asked a lot of info. But it did allow a free registration for limited use.

HMOs: Choosing an HMO/page

a) This page was located within the MedAccess site and provides the consumer with a good listing of evaluative tools for HMOs.
b) It contains info about what an HMO is and pros and cons and reports cards.
c) I would rate this a 3 star as it did not provide a depth of informative resources as some of the other pages.

Infoseek Guide: Search Results/page

a) This page was helpful in the way it was organized. After a search in Infoseek I was able to find in a search by topic the pertinent articles on medicare HMOs.
b) THe congressional article was biased against managed care but didi provide very supportive arguments.
c) I would rate this a 3 star.

Medicare and Managed Care

Medicare and Managed Care/ page

a) This page (document) was found within the Medscape News Archive after a search was done on my topic. It contains much information about HMOs and enrollment,concerns and medline references which lists of current and very focused topics many on Medicare and manged care.
b) The contents include online resources such as Medline and related articles in other web sites such as HCFA and Helath Policy, abtracts, and tables with HMO stats.
c) I would rate this page a 5 since the Medline reference section on Medicare and Managed Care provides at least 10 articles some with abstracts on my topic.

Medicare Information/page

a) This page /document is found within the HCFA WWW site. It provides info about the Medicare program and is a good intro piece for my topic as it is helpful to know what Mediare covers and how it the program is administered before learning about Medicare HMOs.
b) It contatins managed care resource info, handbooks for consumers, info about supplemental benefits, quality of care, pamphlets and frequently asked questions.
c) I would give this a 3 star rating as the handbook alone is a large document and is valuable to consumers. It did not provide as much info on managed care HMOs for Medicare as it should. It was organized and easy to use.

Sites

Health Care Finance Administration/site

a) This site is about HCFA (DHHS) which is the governing and regulatory body for the Medicare and Medicare Risk HMO programs.
b) It provides an overview on HCFA, Medicare,Medicaid, Regualtions,Press Info, Stats & Data. Research & Demonstrations, Customer Service and Other Gov't services.
c) I would rate this about a 3 star since it is easy and clear enough to use and provides many gov't documents and reports that are easilly accessible or it provides reader with contact names and numbers for more information.
It does not look fancy as would be expected and it does not allow a topic search. It is free.

Infoseek Guide: Health & Medicine/site

a) This site provided a good organized selection of managed care info. It was organized and easy to use. It related to my topic but mainly on the con side of HMOs.
b) It contaiend articles from some commercial orgs that were biased. It did contain one particularty informative article from a Congressman but was also only con for managed care.
c) I would rate this a 3 star for ease of use and selection.

MedAccess: Index/site

a) This site was also rated as good by Six Sense Review. It had info rlated to HMOs and it was highly interactive and colorful.
b) This site included a very large directory of newsletters, health and safety tips and articles.
c) I would rate this site with a 4 star rating as it was very user friendly and organized.

Medscape/site

a) This site was probably the best organized and included the most accessible and current medical information of all sites I've used. It includes many professional journal articles and news articles which were further categorized by topics. It was easy to find topics related to minewihtout even having to do a search.
b) It contains structured peer reviewed medical articles, color graphics, stored literature searches and annotated links to relevant Internet resources. The News category was furhter broken down to briefs, editorials,features,columns and found articles on Managed Care and Health-Care Decision Making from the Medical Tribune.
c) I would give this site a 5 star rating. The only draw back was under the PicTours show and tell for clinicians my search by topic found information that looked great on managed medicare but was too large to access.

NewsPage Home Page/site

a) This site on the WWW was organized and easy to use. It had many relevant topics on managed care and HMOs.
b) The index provided for searches on at least 20 topics in a colorful display. I chose helathcare and insurance.
c) I would give a 4 star rating for ease of use and good references.