Public Health Institutecenter for Connected Health Policy

The California Department of Managed Health Care helps consumers resolve problems with their health maintenance organizations and ensure a more stable managed health care system. The department's HMO Help Center assists consumers with health care issues. Since the department's inception in 2000, the Help Center has assisted approximately 700,000 Californians to resolve their HMO problems. The department's efforts for a healthier managed health care system include a variety of steps, such as ensuring HMO accountability through prevention and quality of care laws, develop and launch public education and awareness efforts, provide an annual report card on quality of care of the state's HMOs, ensure fiscal accountability for consumer premium dollars and co-payments throughout the HMO system and work to bring managed health care back to its roots of better preventive care. The California Department of Managed Health Care is headquartered in Sacramento, Calif.