John W Steen, PhD, Principal, John Steen & Associates, Consultants in Health Planning and Health Policy, Chair for Public Policy, American Health Planning, 114 Scenic Drive, Ewing, NJ 08628, (609) 434-1225, jwsteen@att.net

Certificate of Need (CON) regulation has been used by various states at various times over the past 40 years to increase access, improve quality, and restrain costs. It does so by establishing processes in which providers are made accountable for their proposed use of public resources.

In this presentation, CON will be examined as a tool available to states to address the following goals:

• Increasing Medicaid and charity/uncompensated care,
• Improving medical outcomes by regionalizing services,
• Restraining costs by limiting the expansion and introduction of services to meeting identified needs, and
• Using good public process to inform communities of provider plans, and encouraging forums in which they may be made more consonant with community needs and priorities.

Learning Objectives:

• Aware of a number of planning methods to assure a healthy community;
• Better prepared to assess the value of cooperative planning and regulation in their community; and
• Able to weigh, and participate in, the debate over managed care vs. planning and regulation.

Keywords: Certificate of Need, Planning

Related Web page: www.ahpanet.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.