Summary
The authors examine the impact of disease management on utilization of selected health care services. This is a prospective observational population-based study comparing Florida Medicaid patients who elected to participate in disease management (DM) with a usual-care group who elected not to participate in the program. Patients had at least one of four chronic diseases (diabetes, asthma, congestive heart failure, and hypertension) and all received standard health care.
DM participants received supplementary telephone health counseling by a managed care specialist. The data for this paper were collected between October 2001 and October 2004.
Findings show that disease management is effective in reducing potentially avoidable inpatient hospital stays and ER visits among patients with chronic illness.