Introduction: Provisions in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 directed the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS, formerly the Health Care Financing Administration) to begin focusing attention on the standardized measurement of health outcomes of Medicare beneficiaries as well as...

There is a range of interesting approaches to integrate patients' views into disease management systems in order to implement evidence-based practice, and improve patient adherence to treatment and patient satisfaction with care. Information can be provided to stimulate appropriate use of...

Restrictions on the use of pharmaceuticals (such as those for low molecular weight heparins) are commonly imposed by healthcare organizations to combat rising health care costs. These restrictions can be system-based which are established by imposing specific coverage policies by insurance...

Disease management programs in the US were originally developed for the small minority of patients who consumed a large portion of healthcare resources, were complex cases to manage, or had specific chronic conditions. Although they vary in structure and are hard to describe with a single...

The growing burden of chronic illness has contributed to increasing healthcare costs in the past two decades. Disease management can play an important role in reducing the growth in costs while at the same time improving outcomes. It is important that disease management companies accurately...

Managed care, with its restrictions on patient and provider autonomy, has dominated the delivery of healthcare in the US over the last decade. The latest model of managed care has focused on disease management programs, which outline optimal cost-effective processes for care, built on...

A Community Health Information Network (CHIN) is a web-based net of computer systems which allows the electronic exchange of clinical, financial and administrative information among unaffiliated healthcare entities in order to improve the efficiency and delivery of healthcare in the community....