This is a letter of support for Dr. Harold Eist and the other APA officers for the stand they have taken regarding managed care.

Unless actually employed by one of the managed care operations, I do not understand how any psychiatrist can support the system that is destroying our profession.

Study after study over the years has shown the importance of the doctor-patient relationship in medicine generally, but particularly in a psychiatric practice. It is precisely this that managed care is placing in jeopardy.

If our umbrella organization, the American Medical Association, had taken a similar stand early on, we might not today be on the brink of disaster. In the last American Journal of Psychiatry were two lead articles suggesting what role psychiatrists might yet play in providing medical care. I know what I was trained to provide, and I resent insurance companies and managed care organizations preventing my doing so.

William Polanka, M.D.

Fairfield, Ohio

(Psychiatric News, December 20, 1996)