Health Maintenance Organization

Health Maintenance Organization or HMO, business that provides medical care to groups and individuals for a set monthly premium. HMOs often attempt to provide care at a lower cost than traditional fee-for-service insurance arrangements; in return, patients must sometimes accept less choice in treatment options and providers.

For information on:

• main discussion of HMOs, see Managed Health Care: Health Maintenance Organizations; Health Insurance: Health Maintenance Organizations
• relationships between HMOs and hospitals, see Hospital: Ownership of Hospitals
• copayments and other efforts to rein in health-care costs, see Hospital: History of Hospitals
• organization screening HMOs and offering endorsements based on standards of quality and price, see American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)
• HMOs and other attempts to increase access to health care in the United States since the 1930s, see United States (People): Better Health Care
• managed care, see Medicine: Health Care Facilities
• other methods of paying for health care, see Socialized Medicine; Medicare and Medicaid; National Health Insurance