DISMEVAL - Developing and validating disease management evaluation methods for European health care systems

 Background

Together with partners from the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria, France, and Denmark, the Institute of General Practice participates in a EU research project to develop and validate evaluation methods for disease management programs.

More than 50% of the German population older than 40 years suffers from at least one chronic disease. Due to the aging of the population, the number of chronically ill will probably continue to increase even further in the future. Therefore, management and prevention of chronic conditions have been accepted as a key challenge for the health care systems of many industrialized nations.

Many countries have started taking measures with the aim of improving the treatment of chronic diseases while also cutting costs. In Germany, all statutory sickness funds are now required by law to offer disease management programs for the diseases Diabetes, Asthma, COPD, coronary heart disease, and breast cancer. These programs are supposed to provide a better treatment structure, evidence based guidelines and to promote strong patient participation in the treatment process. Patients are required to participate in special training programs and schedule regular appointments with their GP for a number of routine examinations. In 2009, about 5.8 million patients were enrolled in a disease management program. Whether enrolment in a DMP indeed leads to better treatment and therefore an improvement of long-term health outcomes or a reduction in cost is not yet known. Although the evaluation of DMP is also required by law, the aim of this evaluation is to assure that all programs are of comparable quality. Its method (due to the lack of a controlled design) does not provide information regarding the effectiveness of disease management programs.

 Aim

Development of a handbook on different methods for evaluating disease management programs, which can guide decision makers to choose a simple and cost effective method suited for the structural and political framework of the health care system of their country.

 Project phases

  1. Review of approaches to disease management and the evaluation of such programs in all the countries of all project partners.
  2. Development and selection of practical and valid statistical models for the evaluation of disease management programs.
  3. Testing of chosen evaluation methods on data of current disease management programs in different countries.

Homepage: www.dismeval.eu

 Project partners

 Funding

The project is funded by the European comission and will run until 12/2012.

 Contact