ABSTRACT
The future and viability of managed mental health care companies in the United States will depend, to a large degree, upon managed mental health care corporations' ability to demonstrate that their clinical practitioners are competent to provide high quality yet cost effective short-term mental health and psychological services to beneficiaries. Subjective anecdotal treatment reports and clinical summaries that claim psychotherapeutic success, no matter how skillfully written, will not be sufficient to satisfy beneficiaries and such independent evaluators, consumer protection groups, members of the major mental health professions, and officials from the various federal and state agencies that will be created once national health insurance is fully implemented. For accountability to be demonstrated satisfactorily, managed mental health care providers and the therapists they employ will have to document their effectiveness by using universally accepted scientific research methods and evaluation procedures. Reliable and valid tests, instruments, and other such tools that are behaviorally focused and sensitive to clinically produced changes must be used if claims of success are to be taken seriously.
