Special Report: Disease Management

Health professionals strive to solve the disease management puzzle

Companies take different routes to same destination

Disease management (DM). The concept makes so much sense because it helps employees address the challenge of chronic disease, optimize their health, and avoid costly and debilitating complications.

Making good on the promise is another matter. Many different types of programs have been created and implemented over the past few years — some more successful than others. But with each program and each study, the literature builds and our knowledge becomes more sophisticated. The value of technological advances, of course, is impossible to overplay.

In this special report, we’ll look at three distinct DM approaches that represent some of the latest thinking in programming.

What’s inside

In our first story, we’ll see how a cardiovascular DM program offered by a Connecticut utilities company has been integrated into an existing — and highly successful — wellness program.

Next, we’ll learn how a pharmaceutical benefits company in Arizona has combined the principles of self-care with active physician involvement to reduce costs, emergency department visits, and hospital days, and help employees who suffer from asthma.

Finally, we’ll look at a DM approach at an investment company that turns the managed care paradigm upside down — an approach with a decidedly clinical bias, as opposed to a monetary one.

We hope you will enjoy these articles, and that you will find within their pages information that will help you help your employees manage their chronic conditions. As always, we welcome your comments.