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New disease management program significantly lowers hospital costs

Case Management Weekly, September 4, 2007

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According to the American Journal of Critical Care, an experimental disease management program focusing on case management for the chronically critically ill and their caregivers reduced the participating hospital's overall costs of delivering care. The goal was to evaluate how the program affected mortality, health-related quality of life, and resources.

Implemented at University Hospitals of Cleveland by advanced practice nurses from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, the randomized eight-week study revealed on average a reduced hospital stay of 5.77 fewer days for those patients assigned to the program. Although the program did not significantly impact the patients' quality of life, a greater percentage of patients in the experimental group had "improved" quality of life at the end of the study as compared with the control group. The prominent effect of the intervention reduced the number of days of hospital readmission resulting in lower readmission charges.

To read more about the program, visit www.ajcconline.org.

Source: American Association of Critical-Care Nurses

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