An Evaluation of Administrative Controls in Medical-Care Programs

MEDICAL-care programs are set up to achieve fairly specific objectives through the use of finite, and sometimes severely limited, resources. The administering agency, whether private or public, is entrusted with the task of maintaining the program and realizing its purposes without overstepping its budgetary, jurisdictional or operational boundaries. To do this, the agency must exercise the necessary amount of administrative control.1 , 2 Control is direct and unequivocal in the few programs that employ full-time salaried personnel to operate facilities owned by the agency itself. But in many other programs, including health insurance and public-welfare medical care, the administering agency has only . . .