The Society

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Marcia Rising tilted back in her chair just enough so that neither her chief financial officer Leonard Smith, seated to her right, nor Executive VP Dan Elder to her left could see what she was writing on her legal pad. She was expected to take some notes at these meetings, anyhow. After all, she was the boss. Smiling inwardly, she added an ornate dollar sign in front of the 4. At the far end of the broad mahogany table, Vice President Joe Levinson droned on. Levinson was the cost-containment officer for Eastern Quality Health, and as such was responsible more than anyone except Marcia, herself, for the managed-care company’s strong financial picture. But as a speaker, he was as animated and vibrant as drying paint.

“. . We took last quarter’s slumping numbers as a strident warning-a shot across our financial bow, if you will-that we had to renew incentives among our employees and physicians in the area of cost containment. The in-house contest we ran was most successful in this regard. Almost immediately there was a twenty-one percent increase in claims rejected outright, and a thirteen percent increase in those surgical claims that were bundled for payment together with at least one other claim. There were some complaints from doctors, but nothing Bill’s physician-relations people couldn’t handle. . ”

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