title: Savings opportunities through Medicaid disease management.
abstract: In their attempts to control spending in Medicaid, a few states have looked beyond the obvious reductions in reimbursement, tightened eligibility requirements, and institution of copays to disease management outsourcing. While the traditional panoply of cutbacks will save money the year they are instituted, they tend to have trade-offs. Reducing reimbursement, for example, may encourage providers to leave the program. As a result, several states are implementing outsourced medical management programs, which together at maturity will, as shown below, noticeably reduce Medicaid spending by improving the way health care is delivered. These purely voluntary, quality-enhancing outsourced medical management programs are also fully guaranteed by a wide variety of vendors to save money starting in the first year they are implemented.
authors.affiliation: Disease Management Purchasing Consortium, LLC, Wellesley, Massachusetts 02481, USA. diseasmgmt@aol.com.
authors.forename: Alfred
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lewis
mesh_terms: D002662:Child Health Services / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration; D002908:Chronic Disease; D017046:Cost Savings; D006233:Persons with Disabilities; D019468:Disease Management; D004608:Eligibility Determination; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008484:Medicaid; D020416:Outsourced Services / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration; D014481:United States