Preparing psychiatric residents for managed care. Values, proficiencies, curriculum, and implications for psychotherapy training.

As managed care psychiatric service systems become increasingly prominent in academic centers and the larger world of psychiatric practice, residency programs find themselves having to adapt to the value systems and training paradigms necessary for preparing house staff to deal with these systems. Many of the values and some of the necessary proficiencies differ considerably from those of traditional fee-for-service psychiatric practice. This article delineates the value systems under which managed care systems operate, the clinical proficiencies that will be needed by psychiatrists practicing in such settings, the experiential and didactic curriculum necessary to prepare today's psychiatric residents for adapting to managed care-oriented practices, and the implications of these changes for psychotherapy education and training.