What Does PPO Stand For In Health Insurance? 
PPO stands for Prefered Provider Organization . It is the least restrictive form of health insurance that uses a managed care form of utilization management . What that basically means is that one can seek treatment from specialists without prior authorization -LRB- a referal -RRB- , and one can seek treatment from Dr. 's who are either in network or out of network . Although the insurance company will cover a larger percentage of the costs with in-network providers , this is an aspect of the managed care cost control that is called steerage -LRB- basically were one is given an incentive to use network providers thus `` steering '' them toward the cost minimizing option -RRB- . 