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Can You Find the People You Can Help? Can You Help the People that You Find?

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Disease Management and Health Outcomes

Abstract

Because of recent upsurges in medical costs, health plans, employers, and the government will increasingly demand solutions that stretch performance boundaries with regard to quality of care, provider and member satisfaction, and near term cost benefits.

The health management industry is awakening to three trends that will revolutionize the way we provide healthcare: (i) what we look with and what we look for determines how we view health and subsequently how we choose interventions and solution sets; (ii) finding the people we can help requires us to broaden our thinking to include non-disease-based factors as drivers of care-seeking behavior; and (iii) the convergence of new knowledge and new technologies sets the stage for disruptive innovation in the way care is delivered, thereby providing an unprecedented opportunity to extend performance boundaries.

This article details the rationale behind the three trends listed above, which are shaking the traditional foundations of health management and which, taken together, will usher in a dramatic improvement in quality of care and financial outcomes for entities that manage the health and care of populations.

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Acknowledgements

The pilot results reported in this manuscript were supported in part by work performed under contract with ChoiceCare, now owned by Humana Insurance Company, and Proctor & Gamble, in Cincinnati, Ohio. The design, conduct, interpretation, and analysis of the study as well as the writing of the manuscript were completed solely by the author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indiana University School of Nursing and The Haelan® Group, 748 E. Bates Street, Suite 103, Indianapolis, Indiana, 46202, USA

    Julie A. Meek (Chief Science Officer)

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  1. Julie A. Meek
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Correspondence to Julie A. Meek.

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Meek, J.A. Can You Find the People You Can Help? Can You Help the People that You Find?. Dis-Manage-Health-Outcomes 9 (Suppl 1), 13–19 (2001). https://doi.org/10.2165/00115677-200109001-00003

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