News Release

Caution is needed in commercial partnerships in care management

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

Disease management in the American market

In this week's BMJ, Trisha Greenhalgh and colleagues from Barnet Health Authority's Clinical Effectiveness Review Group set out draft standards for use by public sector organisations who are considering entering a partnership with companies offering disease management packages. The authors argue that in the "new Labour" climate of co-operation between commercial and NHS interests, it may be unrealistic to impose a blanket ban on relationships with companies. It may be better simply to require all parties to be explicit about potential conflicts of interest and use a rigorous checklist of quality standards to develop a package which attempts to meet the interests of all parties.

Thomas Bodenheimer, Clinical Professor at the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of California at San Francisco, School of Medicine argues that commercial disease management programmes may take needed money away from actual caregiving in order to enhance companies' profits.

Both the American and British papers conclude that although disease management programmes show promise in improving the care of patients with chronic illnesses, commercial disease management may have damaging, unintended consequences for healthcare systems. There is a transatlantic consensus that health care institutions should resist the trend to outsource disease management work to commercial companies and instead set up in house programmes that help primary care physicians do a better job.

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Contact:

Trisha Greenhalgh, Senior Lecturer in primary health care, Department of Primary Care and Population Sciences, University College Medical School, London N19 3UA Email: p.greenhalgh@ucl.ac.uk

or

Thomas Bodenheimer, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of California at San Francisco, School of Medicine, 1580 Valencia Street, Suite 201, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA Email: tbodie@earthlink.net


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