All levels of medical education will require modification to address the challenges in health care practice brought about by managed care. Because preparation for practice in a managed care environment has received insufficient attention, and because the need for change is so great, in 1995 the authors sought information from a variety of sources to serve as a basis for identifying the core curricular components and the staging of these components in the medical education process. This research effort consisted of a survey of 125 U.S. medical school curriculum deans (or equivalent school representatives); four focus groups of managed care practitioners, administrators, educators, and residents; and a survey of a national sample of physicians and medical directors. Findings indicate that almost all the 91 responding school representatives recognized the importance of revising their curricula to meet the managed care challenge and that the majority either had or were developing programs to train students for practice in managed care environments. The focus groups identified a core set of competencies for managed care practice, although numbers differed on whether the classroom or a managed care setting was the best place to teach the components of a new curriculum. Although medical directors and staff physicians differed with respect to the relative levels of importance of these competencies, the findings suggest that before medical school, training should focus on communication and interpersonal skills, information systems, and customer relations; during medical school, on clinical epidemiology, quality assurance, risk management, and decision analysis; during residency, on utilization management, managed care essentials, and multidisciplinary team building; and after residency, on a review of customer relations, communication skills, and utilization management. The authors conclude that a core curriculum and its sequencing can be identified, that the majority of curricular components exist but in s some cases needed to be modified to more clearly relate to managed care practice, and that their findings may provide a useful starting point for making decisions about curricular reform.