QUALITY: The Divine Secrets of Disease Management

We wrote the other day about the failures and limitations of Medicare's disease management experiments. Les Masterson at Health Leaders Media writes that we need to know a lot more about where the Medicare Health Support projects in particular fell short, what aspects might have worked, and how to build better disease management for the future. He interviewed two Health Dialog (no relation to this blog) disease management company officials about the takeaway lessons. They listed three:

1. Target the right people for interventions and support those patients with the appropriate services
2. Get timely information so you can reach at-risk and recently discharged patients as soon as possible
3. Providers [not just outside disease managers] are an important part of the healthcare team

For Masterson's fuller discussion, click here. (The part I found most relevant was at the end of his article)