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Disease management

Diabetes Care Management Teams Did Not Reduce Utilization When Compared With Traditional Care: A Randomized Cluster Trial
Patrick Kearns, MD, FACP
Studies comparing team care of diabetes with traditional care should be redesigned, say researchers. “In order for redesign studies to support generalization of their findings, methodology should include a randomized, controlled study design with intention-to-treat analysis,” the study states.
Half of American adults may have chronic kidney disease in their future

More aggressive treatment of blood pressure in patients with proteinuric renal disease may be one explanation for the number of new cases of ESRD leveling off. Meanwhile, though, the number of Americans with chronic kidney disease is expected to jump to 16.7% by 2030, or about 38 million people.

Electronic Health Records Bolster Diabetes Outcomes
When Kaiser Permanente Northern California rolled out a new electronic health record (EHR) system for outpatients a few years back, a team of researchers considered it a golden opportunity to evaluate how such systems affect care and outcomes. The staggered implementation of the EHR system at 17 KP-owned…
Case Studies That Flunk Every Plausibility Test Known to Mankind
Al Lewis
Everything in life has an “80–20” rule. Example: 20 percent of the population accounts for more than 80 percent of income; 80 percent of a ball club’s salary goes to 20 percent of its players, and so forth. The 80–20 rule is everywhere. In population health spending, the 80–20 rule is that…
Specialist Pharmacists Make Adherence Matter
Carol Milano
Its costs exceed $177 billion annually. It results in 125,000 deaths, nationwide. Nonadherence to medication is so prevalent that about half of the 3.2 billion prescriptions issued in the United States are not taken as directed. To encourage compliance, Medco Health Solutions tried an innovative approach.…
Heart Failure Treatment Gaps Costs Lives, Hikes Expenses
Bob Kirsch
Heart failure results in substantial morbidity, mortality, and health care expenditures. There are 5.8 million people in the United States with heart failure, and this condition has one of the highest rates of hospitalization and rehospitalization. There are, fortunately, several therapies that are…
Plans Breathe Life Into COPD Efforts
Bob Kirsch
The 2003 National Health Interview Survey found that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease would ascend from the fourth- to the third-leading cause of death in the United States by 2020. It was off by a mile. COPD has already taken third place on the list, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control…
Emerging Insights About Measuring Disease Management Outcomes
Al Lewis
Perhaps no issue in disease management (DM) is more controversial than outcomes measurement. As for wellness, that field is five years behind DM in the ability to measure outcomes validly. Being five years behind DM in measurement is like being five years behind Iraq in democracy. Many — if not…
Economic Benefits of Improved Insulin Stability In Insulin Pumps
Richard C. Weiss, BS, MS
ABSTRACT Purpose: Insulin pump users discard unused medication and infusion sets according to labeling and manufacturer’s instructions. The stability labeling for insulin aspart [rDNA origin] (Novolog) was increased from two days to six. The associated savings was modeled from the perspective of a…
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