Utilization management for residential programs.

This paper reviews recent literature on utilization management (UM) in community-based supportive residential programs for people with behavioral disorders. Various approaches for facilitating placement and movement are discussed in the context of an effort to develop a residential UM process in New Haven, Connecticut. Recommendations are made for a residential UM process that may be applied to a range of service systems. It takes into account the methodological difficulties inherent in the development of generalizable decision tools.