Growing competition in health care markets and Medicaid managed care, combined with cuts in government funds that subsidize care to the uninsured, are challenging the viability of the safety net. In response to these pressures, "safety-net" providers in fifteen communities are integrating vertically and horizontally, contracting with or forming managed care plans, and seeking to attract paying ...

Robotics software require and provide a number of different functionalities, which are typically encapsulated in components that cooperate and compete in order to control the behavior of a robot. Cooperation and competition are forms of interaction among concurrent activities and so they have to be coordinated. In order to achieve a good level of reusability and flexibility the coordination and...

With the growth of managed care and market competition, a diverse set of largely provideraffiliated organizations has emerged to mediate risk and care management responsibility between managed care organizations and individual providers. Emerging evidence shows that some of these organizations are under duress and that others have actually failed. Policymakers need to know more about the organi...

Despite the obvious differences between the USA and UK health care systems, they share the characteristics of being motivated and managed in relation to cost and process rather than quality (the improved health status of patients). Whilst governments and insurers across the world use the rhetoric of quality, they, as epitomized by the behaviours of UK and USA decision makers, fail to define, me...

the primary purpose of this paper is to highlight for the research community and practitioners the various aspects of using vmi-type supply chains in today’s business environment as well as a number of directions for future studies. in this regard, fifty articles published in major international journals, beginning in 1995, which contribute to the vmi-type supply chains are reviewed via a syste...

In 2006 a major healthcare reform was introduced in the Netherlands, implying managed competition. This study explored level of consensus on outcomes and desired changes this new system, differences between stakeholder groups. A three-round Delphi-study conducted among Dutch insurers, health economists, professionals general practice (GP) care mental (MH) care. first round, 20 experts indicated...

Honey bees and, more recently, bumblebees have been domesticated and are now managed commercially primarily for crop pollination, mixing with wild pollinators during foraging on shared flower resources. There is mounting evidence that managed honey bees or commercially produced bumblebees may affect the health of wild pollinators such as bumblebees by increasing competition for resources and th...

Recent business trends have given rise to coopetition: simultaneous cooperation and competition between firms. Coopetition entails the sharing of knowledge which may be a key source of competitive advantage. Under coopetition there is a paradox that the knowledge shared for cooperation may also be used for competition. While the existence of this problem is known, there is little investigation ...

The dominant managed care model in the USA is the individual practice association (IPA), in which physicians in separate practices contract with a health plan. One alternative model, the capitated multispecialty group practice (CMGP), has some distinct advantages: (i) the best randomized trial comparing a health management organization (HMO) with indemnity insurance showed equivalent health out...

Throughout their lifetime, cells may suffer insults that reduce their fitness and disrupt their function, and it is unclear how these potentially harmful cells are managed in adult tissues. We address this question using the adult Drosophila posterior midgut as a model of homeostatic tissue and ribosomal Minute mutations to reduce fitness in groups of cells. We take a quantitative approach comb...