Self-Directed Health Plans (SDHP)

A new paradigm for health insurance is emerging. This new structure allows more freedom of choice and direction for a consumer in planning their healthcare. Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are an example of the viable alternatives to more traditional managed care models.

Self-directed health plans (SDHP), also called consumer directed health plans, is another rapidly emerging approach to organizing, purchasing and financing health care services. These plans succeed in providing consumers a method by which they can design and implement their own health plan, customized to their specific needs, healthcare philosophies and circumstances.

Since January 1, 2002 insurers began offering plans which gave patients and their physicians the autonomy to make decisions about what medical services they wanted and who they wanted to administer these services. Familiar elements of managed care, including gatekeepers (administrators who define what is “medically necessary” and thus covered by their plans), pre-authorization processes, network provider limitations, are replaced with self-directed health plans that make consumers the controllers of their own destinies. Patients and their doctors decide how insurance funds should be spent.

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Read more about other types of plans:

PPO Plans
POS Plans
HMO Plans
Health Savings Accounts (HSA)
Prescription Plans
Discount Plans

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