Employee benefits managers, insurance brokers, benefits consultants, and union officials control about a third of the funds spent each year in the United States for behavioral health care. Yet there has been little or no academic research on these decision makers' knowledge about mental disorders and their treatments, attitudes toward consumers of behavioral health care, or beliefs about the value of health insurance for behavioral health care. This lack of information is unfortunate since the majority of people in the United States rely on employ-ment based health insurance to finance a substantial part of their behavioral health care. Accordingly, the purpose of this small grant application is to lay the ground work for a national study of employee benefits managers and other decision makers concerned with the purchase of employment based insurance for behavior-al health care. The research team will assemble a national panel of employee benefits managers, insurance brokers, benefits consultants, and union officials. With advice from the national panel, the researchers will devise questionnaire items designed to tap benefits managers' knowledge about mental illness and chemical dependency as well as about treatments for people with these conditions, their attitudes about consumers of behavioral health services, and their beliefs about the value of behavioral health care. The instrument will be pilot tested on a random sample of benefits managers and finalized. The research team will also identify a sampling frame to be used in a national survey of benefits managers. The national survey, in turn, will yield considerable information that will be useful in understanding benefits managers' decision making about behavioral health care and in devising market-able behavioral health care insurance programs. Products of the small grant will include: (a) a sampling frame of benefits managers, (b) a pre-tested survey instrument, and (c) preliminary data to be used in planning a national survey of these decision makers.
| McFarland, Bentson H; Lierman, Walter K; Penner, Norman R et al. (2003) Employee benefits managers' opinions about addiction treatment. J Addict Dis 22:15-29 |
| McFarland, Bentson H (2002) Benefits managers' views on MH/SA raise cause for concern. Behav Healthc Tomorrow 11:22-7, 31 |
| Goetz, R R; McFarland, B H; Ross, K V (2000) Effects of runaway health care costs. New Dir Ment Health Serv :3-Jan |
