What is Disease Management?

Disease management is a newer type of health care delivery system that seeks to control costs better and improve patient outcomes for specific types of patient populations. For example, congestive heart failure is a chronic disease state that is often difficult to keep under control. Many patients, unfortunately, require many hospitalizations to stabilize the condition. Readmissions are often common. This lead to increased health care costs as well as further patient frustration.
Disease management seeks to correct the issue of frequent hospital admissions by managing patients with this diagnosis through the continuum of care. Disease management is generally overseen by a qualified registered nurse or nurses. A disease management program is established for specific chronic disease populations that are identified as high cost cases.
A common one again is congestive heart failure. A disease management program would include the following components:
The patients care plan is overs