Monitoring and evaluating the delivery of services under managed care.

This overview discusses the importance of monitoring and evaluating the delivery of services under managed care, particularly with respect to assessing access and quality in managed care. It also lists recent Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) initiatives in this area, and presents an introduction to the articles published in this issue of the Review. The topics addressed by these articles range from assessing and monitoring access and quality provided by traditional types of managed care organizations (MCOs) serving Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries to issues that must be considered in developing and monitoring new delivery system models.