PRESS RELEASES
MEDIA RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Thursday, October 14, 2004
CBO: No Cost Savings in Disease Management
(St. Paul, Minnesota) - In what may come as a stunning surprise, the
Congressional Budget Office today reports that there is virtually no
literature supporting cost savings through Disease Management
programs.
"What is particularly important about this report is that it comes at
a time when Congress and legislatures across the country are
beginning to pour millions of dollars into disease management," says
Twila Brase, president of Citizens' Council on Health Care.
"What this should say to state legislatures and Congress is 'Don't
waste the taxpayer's money," she adds.
Disease management focuses on chronic disease and practice
guidelines. It attempts to educate people about their chronic
disease, to encourage proper use of medication, to modify patient
behavior, to monitor patient symptoms and treatment plans (following
practice guidelines), and to coordinate care for patients with
chronic disease.
However, in a letter to Congressman Don Nickles, the CBO writes:
- "There is insufficient evidence to conclude that disease management
programs can generally reduce overall health spending."
- "The few studies that report cost savings do so for controlled
settings and generally fail to account for all health care costs,
including the cost of the intervention itself. Furthermore, if
disease management programs were applied to broader populations, the
reported savings might not be attainable, and the programs could even
raise costs."
Physicians should be very concerned. The report notes that if disease
management leads to increased use of physician services in Medicare,
Medicare's "sustainable growth rate" payment system will result in
reduced payments to physicians:
"In effect, physicians as a group would bear the increased cost
instead of the Medicare program."
"At a time when health care costs are a big concern to the American
public, this report should lead legislators, government officials and
employers to take a second look at just what they're paying for,"
says Brase.
CBO REPORT: http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5909&sequence=0&from=7
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Citizens' Council on Health Care is an independent, non-profit, free-market health care policy organization located in St. Paul, Minnesota.
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