Research-based clinical priority areas a great opportunity to reach out with "best practice" interventions

Physicians have always managed their patients' diseases one on one, and one at a time. But until recently, there have been only limited efforts to leverage the vast and growing base of medical knowledge about particular diseases or conditions by systematically addressing the needs of entire populations of patients.

Care management programs identify and group people into disease-specific (such as people with diabetes) or condition-specific (such as older adults) populations that we can systematically "reach out to" with appropriate, evidence-based prevention and health maintenance interventions- interventions that have been identified through research as "best practices" for sustaining and improving the health of a given population.

CMI identifies "the right thing" by synthesizing information about the best clinical approaches from both within and outside Kaiser Permanente. We draw on epidemiological research, outcomes measurement, clinical guideline development, and care redesign to create evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and care management programs for selected clinical priority areas.

These clinical priority areas are strategically selected because they represent a great opportunity to improve care for specific populations of members, as well as to improve cost-effectiveness.

This information is excerpted from Making the Right Thing Easier to Do, the Care Management Institute's new information booklet. A printable Adobe Acrobat version of the booklet is available here.

© 2009 Care Management Institute