Health maintenance organizations (HMOs) are a type of managed care health insurance plan that features a network of health care providers that treat a patient population for a prepaid cost. As prepaid health plans, HMOs combine financing and care delivery and thus allegedly provide an incentive to provide cost-efficient quality care. The motivation for the emergence of HMOs was a desire to align financial and care-quality incentives. Such alignment of incentives contrasts with alternative health care payment structures such as fee-for-service designs where those providing care may have a financial incentive to do so inefficiently.
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