Patent US 7,657,442

Health care administration methods are disclosed that substantially conserve the utilization of health care resources available to care for a specified patient population. Initially, a patient population is generated whereby each patient therein is assigned a risk based upon a retrospective and postspective assessment of the patient. Once the patient population is generated, utilization management practices are implemented that restrict utilization of health care resources without adversely impacting clinical outcome or quality of care until such utilization of resources is deemed medically warranted. A network of health care providers and health care providing institutions administers health care to the population according to methods of the present invention based upon primary care decision making practices utilizing the most cost-effective management practices and minimizing the use of specialists and in-patient/out-patient services whenever applicable.