A mental health capitation program: II. Cost-benefit analysis.

Objective: Total monetized and nonmonetized costs and benefits to society of the Monroe-Livingston demonstration project's capitated payment system (CPS) were analyzed.

Methods: Total costs and benefits of care for individuals who were prerandomized to an experimental group (of whom about 57 percent were enrolled in the CPS) were compared with those for a control group who received traditional fee-for-service care. Separate two-year results are presented for continuous patients, who were enrolled in a comprehensive CPS plan (N = 201) and for intermittent patients, who were enrolled in a partial plan (N = 155).

A mental health capitation program: I. Patient outcomes.

Objective: The Monroe-Livingston demonstration project's capitation payment system (CPS) was evaluated to determine whether capitated funding of mental health care, compared with fee-for-service funding, could reduce hospitalization rates and improve functioning and symptoms for severely and persistently mentally ill adults without increasing the total cost of care.

Methods: The experiment was a communitywide prerandomized clinical trial involving 422 patients. Patients who were randomized into the experimental group were eligible for enrollment in a capitated funding program administered by one of five community mental health centers.

Methodology for evaluating the Monroe-Livingston capitation system.

This paper presents the methodology for evaluating the Monroe-Livingston demonstration project's capitation payment system (CPS), based in Rochester, New York, for chronic mentally ill patients. To allow for both patient and provider choice within the experimental design, 1,587 CPS-eligible patients were randomly assigned at the start of the study to control or experimental conditions, with the intent of capturing in the experimental group a significant number of patients who would later be enrolled in the CPS. Protocols, which included measures of symptomatology, functioning, and resource utilization, were completed at baseline for 422 of the 605 patients contacted for inclusion in the study.