Health care costs are rising at ever increasing rates. Managed health care has emerged as one possible way of addressing this issue. Already, there are nearly 60 million people in the United States who receive their care through programs such as health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and preferred provider organizations (PPOs). These managed care systems almost always offer outpatient mental health services to their subscribers which are described as short-term in nature. Thus, brief psychotherapy is emerging as a very important method of treatment. Although outcome and quality considerations would dictate that psychotherapists at managed care programs be experts in brief treatment, this is rarely the case. The principal aim of the proposed work is to develop a set of marketable training programs for psychotherapists working for managed care programs. Using current knowledge in brief therapy, adult education and effective training methods, the investigators would strive to create a series of programs which would be both progmatic and innovative. In Phase I we will produce the prototypes for two training programs at different levels of intensity. During Phase II we will conduct a randomized trial to compare the outcomes of these programs. We will study changes in areas such as therapist's average outpatient utilization per client, patient outcomes, quality of care, length of treatment and program acceptance. The final products of this project will be a series of field-tested training programs for managed care clinicians.
