Medical Care Ratio

Medical care ratio (MCR), also known as medical cost ratio, medical loss ratio, and medical benefit ratio, is a metric used in managed health care and health insurance to measure medical costs as a percentage of premium revenues. It is a type of loss ratio, which is a common metric in insurance measuring the percentage of premiums paid out in claims rather than expenses and profit provision. It is calculated by dividing those premiums allocated for fully insured or self-funded health care coverage into the total expenses for inpatient, professional (physicians and other licensed providers), outpatient, and pharmacy. (Briefly, MCR = Costs/Premiums.) As a general rule, a medical cost ratio of 85% or less is desirable. Some insurers now call MCR "benefit cost ratio" (BCR). In the United States, the term is Medical Loss Ratio.

Famous quotes containing the words medical, care and/or ratio:

    There may perhaps be a new generation of doctors horrified by lacerations, infections, women who have douched with kitchen cleanser. What an irony it would be if fanatics continued to kill and yet it was the apathy and silence of the medical profession that most wounded the ability to provide what is, after all, a medical procedure.
    Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)

    “What care I for a goose-feather bed,
    With the sheet turned down so bravely, O?
    For to-night I shall sleep in a cold open field,
    Along with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O!”
    —Unknown. The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies (l. 33–36)

    A magazine or a newspaper is a shop. Each is an experiment and represents a new focus, a new ratio between commerce and intellect.
    John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)