GROUP-PSYCHOTHERAPY AND MANAGED BEHAVIORAL HEALTH-CARE - CURRENT TRENDS AND FUTURE CHALLENGES

The rising cost of health care within the private and public sectors h as created an increased demand for the management of benefit dollars. This trend has significant implications for group psychotherapists, as group modalities offer cost-effective ways of delivering services to traditional outpatient and inpatient populations. Continued cost-conta inment pressures and increasing attention to outcome studies will fuel trends toward briefer, manualized group treatments and intensive grou p outpatient programs as alternatives to hospitalization. Quality-base d demands will challenge payors to (a) address biases against group ps ychotherapy among providers and patients and (b) integrate recent proc ess-and-outcome research in determining the appropriateness of group v ersus individual modalities for particular patients and presenting pro blems.