Consumer Directed Medical Review Publisher William R. Boyles believes PPOs will not survive the 21st Century and will probably disappear by 2010.

In a new white paper presented at a recent seminar on how PPOs can integrate disease management into their business model, Boyles concludes that they can’t.

According to Boyles, PPOs “are the very opposite of price transparency. They freeze in the prices of virtually all practicing physicians in a market in a process that no actual consumer ever sees or controls.”

Boyles gave other reasons why PPOs will not work with either disease management or consumer-driven health care.

The paper is available online at http://hmsresearch.net/docs/PPOs.pdf.