Disease Management Programs

Renewed health care cost growth may create an incentive for health plans and employers to keep employees as healthy as possible by emphasizing wellness, health promotion, and disease management programs. Disease management is defined as a systematic approach to coordinated health care that seeks to identify individuals and populations who have--or are at risk of developing--certain targeted, mainly chronic medical conditions. It offers the possibility of saving money while improving health by reducing employees' need for expensive hospitalizations and other health treatments, and evidence indicates that employers are showing increased interest in disease management programs. This article describes disease management programs, their objectives, their prevalence, their effectiveness and impact, and the outlook for this approach to health care in the future. The PDF for the above title, published in the August 2002 issue of EBRI Notes, also contains the fulltext of another August 2002 EBRI Notes article abstracted on SSRN: "Health Insurance Coverage and the Near Elderly, 2000."