In today's environment of managed care, practitioners face more daunting challenges than ever: treatment authorizations are becoming more difficult to obtain, as are referrals to other healthcare practitioners, which are increasingly performance based.

Into this competitive environment comes Casebook for Managing Managed Care: A Self-Study Guide for Treatment Planning, Documentation, and Communication. Dedicated to helping mental healthcare practitioners clearly articulate and prove the value of what they provide patients within the managed care system, this foundational text uniquely fills a gap in the literature by providing a user-friendly, self-contained tutorial for the Patient Impairment Profile (PIP) documentation method. The PIP combines impairment terminology, the impairment profile, and the various treatment plan components to create a common language for describing behavior-based patient dysfunction and communicating the clinical rationale for treatment.

As a model for treatment plan development, the PIP system trains the practitioner (or treatment team) in the "must-have" skills needed for todays managed care environment. Here practitioners will find explicit instructions about how to * Communicate treatment needs convincingly* Distinguish effectively between goals, objectives, and interventions* Track progress over time* Document treatment summaries efficiently

Using clear language and a wide array of case vignettes, the Casebook demonstrates how using PIPS can streamline the documentation, communication, and decision-making processes.

The Casebook continues the groundbreaking tradition of its predecessors: Managing Managed Care: The Mental Health Practitioner's Survival Guide (Goodman et al. 1992) and Managing Managed Care II: A Handbook for Mental Health Professionals, Second Edition (Goodman et al. 1996). It is uniquely valuable both as a stand-alone instructional text and as a companion to the second edition, which introduced the Patient Impairment Lexicon and the PIP system itself. The Casebook's updates to the Impairment Lexicon definitions that first appeared in Managing Managed Care II are based on the authors' ongoing psychometric evaluation and research.

This practical text will find its way onto the bookshelves of mental healthcare practitioners and managed care personnel alike. Psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, and psychiatric nurses-especially those participating as managed care providers-and case managers and utilization reviewers within managed care organizations, regardless of background, will find a framework for success within these pages. The Casebook's broad appeal also extends to both students in healthcare disciplines and the graduate programs that train them, and to psychiatric/behavioral healthcare organizations and facilities (inpatient, outpatient, and residential), where it will be used for treatment planning.