The increasing burden of chronic disease in the United States and other industrialized nations continues to drive healthcare costs to new heights...

The population suffering from chronic health conditions is substantial and growing. This trend is increasingly affecting the quality of life and productivity of individuals with poor health and taking a toll on the economy due to the resultant increases...

To ameliorate the healthcare costs and disease burden that result from smoking, employers are increasingly seeking smoking cessation programs to reduce risk among the employee population. This study of QuitNet Comprehensive, a multi media smoking cessation program, found that...

To determine whether members with two years of experience in the myhealthIQSM program have continued improvement or sustained improvement in health risk levels, biometric data was collected from 4,353 individuals who completed three consecutive annual screenings of 13 different...

Healthways provides a biometric screening program that provides an accurate assessment of individual health risk based on biometric measurements from a blood screen and brief physical examination...

Advanced analytic and forecasting methodologies can enable organisations to more fully leverage the data resources available to them. In the healthcare industry, service providers can use data mining methods to enhance the decision-making process in optimising...

To evaluate effectiveness of an Internet-based smoking cessation program as part of a comprehensive health risk reduction initiative in a large, geographically dispersed employee population...

To significantly reduce smoking prevalence, treatments must balance reach, efficacy, and cost. The Internet can reach millions of smokers cost-effectively. Many cessation Web sites exist, but few have been evaluated...

The Internet offers a promising channel to conduct smoking cessation research. Among the advantages of Internet research are the ability to access large numbers of participants who might not otherwise participate in a cessation trial, and the ability to conduct research efficiently and cost-effectively...

An increasing number of people have access to the Internet, and more people are seeking tobacco cessation resources online every year...

  Background  The Internet is a viable channel to deliver evidence based smoking cessation treatment that has the potential to make a large population impact on reducing smoking prevalence. There is high demand for smoking cessation information and support on

Abstract Organizations across industry sectors have intensified their initiatives to increase operational efficiency through effective resource allocation, and the health care sector is no exception. The health care industry has been faced with a number of additional factors that

Today, in its third and latest incarnation, disease management enjoys widespread use among the vast majority of U.S. payers. All but 5 of the 120 U.S. payers assessed by our recent benchmarking study have DM programs in place. More than 80 percent of the medical and DM program directors we interviewed told us that their plans offered disease management because senior executives viewed it as a competitive necessity. Payers and employers have adopted disease management even though no standard methodology yet exists for measuring whether DM programs produce cost savings and how much. If such a methodology did exist, DM penetration would certainly be even higher.

Because effective disease management has significant impact on the quality of care delivered and on overall costs, it is a logical arena for collaboration. For it to occur, however, a natural distrust that generally exists between payers and physicians must be overcome.

Abstract A convergence of market, clinical, regulatory, and consumer forces is creating a strong demand for high quality and cost effective health care services. Meeting this pressing need is one of the greatest challenges managed care organizations (MCOs), employers, and

Maximizing participation: The problems with patient enrollment

Despite compound annual growth rates of 30% to 40% for the disease management (DM) industry over the past decade, the question "Does disease management work?" has persisted.

Healthcare cost trends have long been moving in the wrong direction. Some employers have success- fully reduced the upward trajectory of health-related expenses...

The aging demographic profile of the American population coupled with the increased burden of chronic disease is increasing the demand for care – both within the healthcare system and within the home. As a result of these trends, a