title: Estimating the return on investment in disease management programs using a pre-post analysis.
abstract: Disease management programs have become increasingly popular over the past 5-10 years. Recent increases in overall medical costs have precipitated new concerns about the cost-effectiveness of medical management programs that have extended to the program directors for these programs. Initial success of the disease management movement is being challenged on the grounds that reported results have been the result of the application of faulty, if intuitive, methodologies. This paper discusses the use of "pre-post" methodology approaches in the analysis of disease management programs, and areas where application of this approach can result in spurious results and incorrect financial outcome assessments. The paper includes a checklist of these items for use by operational staff working with the programs, and a comprehensive bibliography that addresses many of the issues discussed.
authors.affiliation: Highmark, Inc., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222, USA. donald.fetterolf@highmark.com
authors.forename: Donald
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Fetterolf
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wennberg
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Devries
mesh_terms: D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D019468:Disease Management; D005102:Health Expenditures; D006801:Humans; D015397:Program Evaluation / Q000379:methods*; D015983:Selection Bias; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014481:United States