Resisting the pull of the health insurance tarbaby: An organizational model for surviving managed care

Insurance company managed mental health care makes a basic change in the clinical process, transforming what had been a therapeutic dyad into a three-party process. The newly formed San Fernando Valley Alliance of Mental Health Professionals for the Preservation of Privacy and Self Determination in Psychotherapy seeks to preserve the practice of traditional psychotherapy and keep it accessible to a middle-income clientele by a public education process in which the privacy and autonomy of the therapeutic dyad are presented as thesine qua non of psychotherapy.     

Improving the quality of life: Prescriptions for change

The main points made in the previous papers are summarized and integrated and the strategies that the authors have recommended for producing an improved QOL are discussed. QOL is also systematically reviewed in relation to matters of definition, assessment, applications, and directions for future research and practice.     

Modelling the use of the manager's time

This paper starts from two problems: the lack of use of queueing theory (and OR models in general) and the need for greater personal time effectiveness expressed by managers. The application of waiting line theory to the general managerial role is proposed and the most salient assumptions in such an application are explored. A simple example is undertaken which results in tentatively promising evidence. Further questions and possibilities are raised.     

How to Approximate a Histogram by a Normal Density

Which normal density curve best approximates the sample histogram? The answer suggested here is the normal curve that minimizes the integrated squared deviation between the histogram and the normal curve. A simple computational procedure is described to produce this best-fitting normal density. A few examples are presented to illustrate that this normal curve does indeed provide a visually satisfying fit, one that is better than the traditional , s answer. Some further aspects of this procedure are investigated. In particular it is shown that there is a satisfactory answer that is independent of the bar width of the histogram. It is also noted that this graphical procedure provides highly robust estimates of the sample mean and standard deviation. We demonstrate our technique by using data including Newcomb's data of passage time of light and Fisher's iris data.     

Kansas Periodicals

Abstract

Many changes in the Law School Library have occurred during this past year because of INNOVACQ. Within the Serials/Acquisitions Section, almost all the routines and procedures have been radically redefined to allow for the computerization of serials control. There have been some staff reassignments and shifts in responsibility, and in most instances, old tasks and manual file maintenance have been done away with completely and replaced by work at a VDT. Naturally, the impact of INNOVACQ has also been felt in the Cataloging Section, and the instant availability of serials check-in and routing information in public services has certainly added a level of service that was never possible before. In addition, the immediate and up-to-date fiscal information has been a boon for both the library's collection development officers and the Library administration.

Various staff members throughout the year have been working to clean up and upgrade different parts of the serials files and to add or exchange better information in a number of fields in each record. Past payment history has been keyed into over 2/3 of the records in the file. The records for all the loose-leaf services contracted for by the Library are not fully online.

All the records for our California documents have been edited and check-in cards have been created for this large and obviously important part of the file. Conversion of the U.S. documents which had been deferred at the very beginning of the fiscal year, has begun and most entries now can be checked-in and claimed online.

All invoices (both serials and monographs) for this fiscal year have been processed on INNOVACQ, and while there are still some vendor and fund anomalies, Boalt has better, more comprehensive — and certainly more accurate — financial records than ever before.

A massive editing and claiming project has recently gotten under way. All titles on INNOVACQ are being checked against the shelf list to make sure that all the bibliographic elements in each record are in sync and are presented in a standard, retrievable (punctuation and spacing count in INNOVACQ) format. Routine claiming (as part of serials check-in) has been in place for some time now, and that activity was begun when that feature was delivered. A second part of the editing project, is however, to get the thousands of blank boxes out of the check-in screens where they will remain as claimable items until some sort of purging action is taken. The files are now being gone through (a simple command in INNOVACQ can allow one to review every check-in record in the system), our holdings are being checked on the shelves, and decisions to claim or replace the missing pieces are being made. We anticipate that this editing/ claiming project will take approximately half a year.

The INNOVACQ system was pretty exciting when we first saw it demonstrated, and we were eager then to incorporate it into our technical processing activities here at Boalt. If anything, our enthusiasm has grown as the capabilities of INNOVACQ have been realized. Enhancement and refinement — some at our prompting, others by the design staff at Innovative Interfaces — over the past year have resulted in what we believe to be the most comprehensive and easy-to-use serials control system available. Our confidence was manifested when we shifted all of our acquisitions activities from RLIN to INNOVAQ at the beginning of our fiscal year in mid-1984.

Many tasks remain for the Law Library in making the best use of the INNOVACQ system. The rapid acceptance by the public service staff and users has been heartening, and the continuing work to clean up the Serials Records has proven fruitful. System performance and maintenance have been outstanding, and we are excited about various possibilities for future growth. It has not been a simple nor uncomplicated process, but the gains realized by the Law library have been substantial.