Design Options for a Self-Management Support Program
In both the literature and interviews, we found wide
variation in the design of current programs. In particular, programs vary with
respect to:
- The location of the program within the health care system; i.e.,
what entity offers the service and manages it.
- The extent to which the program is provided through personal
interaction between coaches and patients.
- Staffing.
- Content of the support.
- Patient population served.
- Information support.
- Protocols for how staff is to provide the support.
- Staff training.
- In what manner and how often coaches communicate with patients.
- Nature of the communication between primary care physicians and
self-management support staff.
These factors are discussed in more detail below. The
programs also vary in terms of the performance measures used. Program
evaluation is discussed in the main section that follows.
Program Location and Extent of Personal Interaction Between Coaches and
Patients
Programs vary with respect to:
- Where they are located within the health care system; i.e., who
has responsibility and authority for their day-to-day operations.
- Whether or not self-management support is provided through some
form of personal interaction.
Some programs are located within primary care practices,
some are run by other health care organizations such as plans or hospitals, and
others are run by commercial vendors. For purposes of this discussion, we will
distinguish between those programs that are located within the primary care
setting and are under the responsibility of the local provider (e.g., physician
group or clinic) and those that are located outside of the local setting (e.g.,
through a plan or commercial vendor or centralized within an independent
delivery system).
In addition, some programs include telephone contact or
face-to-face contact but are distinguished from programs that rely entirely on
technology or written materials without any person-to-person interface.
Personal interaction may be further characterized by whether it involves
face-to-face meetings or relies on contact by telephone or computer.
These first two factors combine to create four models of
self-management support delivery most frequently seen in the United States today. The four models are summarized in Table 1 and described further below.
Primary Care Model
In the primary care model,
self-management support is usually provided directly by local providers'
offices and usually includes face-to-face contact in the primary care office
setting. The patient may be referred to additional self-management support
resources. Action plans are often used as tools for collaborative goal setting,
patient activation, and communication, and clinicians have ready access to
patients' self-management assessments and goals. Group sessions (group visits,
classes, support groups) can be offered in these local settings. The coaches
may work on teams with clinicians.
Current database and information technology constraints in
many primary care practices may limit the availability of patient information
to support the self-management support coaches' decisions. Program objectives
are more likely to be framed in terms of quality rather than return on
investment. The development of primary care, office-based mechanisms for
self-management support frequently occurs as part of efforts to implement the
Chronic Care Model in primary care practices. These programs are initiated by
the local, primary care practice (or by the delivery system of which the local
practice is a part). Plans, employers, and other payers can use contracting
mechanisms or possibly incentives, such as pay-for-performance, to encourage
this local self-management support programming, but they usually do not purchase
it directly. An example of a real-life primary care model is described in the
following box.
Example of a Primary Care Model
This private, non-profit corporation of nine community
medical centers provides preventive and primary care services in a rural,
underserved area. The centers began developing self-management support services
in 1999 for patients with diabetes. They now have hired 15 "care managers" who
provide self-management support for multiple conditions (such as asthma,
cardiovascular disease, depression, and diabetes) and for prevention and
lifestyle issues.
The care managers primarily are licensed practical nurses. A
care manager meets with a patient in the primary care setting, and they work
together to set a self-management goal that is "actionable and time framed,"
according to the program. Group visits are used as well as office visits and
phone calls.
The goal of the program is to have every patient seen by a care
manager, and for 97 percent of all patients to set an annual self-management
goal. The care managers follow up with the patients (in-person or by telephone)
to see how they are doing at meeting their goals. They also will contact the
person prior to a scheduled visit to ask what problems he or she would like to
discuss during the visit. Problem solving is seen as the foundation of
self-management support. The care manager interacts with the patient's primary
care clinicians through a team structure that includes regular team "huddles."
Program management evaluates the effectiveness of the self-management support
program with measures of patients' confidence in their ability to manage their
conditions.
These measures use patient-reported data collected with an
anonymous written survey.
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External On-the-ground and External Call Center Models
In
contrast to primary care model programs, programs in the external on-the-ground and external call-center models are managed from outside the local primary
care setting and are likely to be referred to as "disease management" programs.
Such programs differ from each other in the nature and degree of personal
interaction between the self-management support staff and the patient.
In the external on-the-ground model, self-management support
is provided by an organizational entity external to the local provider and
usually outside of the primary care setting. The support generally is more
intensive than in the other models and involves face-to-face and telephone
interaction. The coaches have their "boots on the ground" in that they may go to
where the patients are, providing support in homes, primary care offices, and
community settings. More medical care management and coordination may be
provided. This model usually uses large electronic databases, allowing
identification of full populations with given diagnoses and often
patient-specific data on visit and prescription utilization to guide
self-management support interactions. Although outreach and some
self-management support, such as written materials, an educational Web site, or
possibly a hotline or call-in number, may be offered to everyone identified
with the diagnosis, only a defined subset of the patients receive the services
of the health coach. Program objectives are likely to be framed in terms of
return on investment and quality improvement. External call-center programs may
be developed internally in plans and independent delivery systems or purchased
from vendors by plans, independent delivery systems, employers, or government
payers. Purchasers of health care also can use contracting mechanisms to obtain
such services. The box below presents an example of this model.
Example of an External on-the-Ground Model
An example of an external on-the-ground program is a
diabetes disease management program developed and run by an independent
delivery system. During the period under study, the program employed 51 RNs as
primary care nurse educators and case managers. Each nurse was responsible for
1-15 primary care sites. The nurses provided self-management support at the
primary care clinic in one-on-one encounters or in group sessions. A nurse saw
each patient from one to four times, depending on disease severity and patient
and physician preference.
Self-management education focused on "the appropriate
use of a glucose meter, the role of diet and exercise, the importance of HbA1c
testing, medication management, the management of hypoglycemia, and teaming
closely with physicians in the use of staged diabetes management clinical
guidelines to achieve optimum blood glucose control."59 The nurses
documented every encounter in the patient's medical record, and physicians were
asked to review and co-sign the entries. Each nurse also collected information
from the patient and the medical record for entry into a registry.
This support
was part of a larger disease management program that also included nurse
promotion of diabetes clinical practice guidelines in their day-to-day
interactions with patients and physicians, specialty clinic referrals, and CME
sessions.38,59
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External Call Center Model
In this model,
self-management support is provided under the authority of an organizational
entity external to the local provider and usually outside of the primary care
setting. Self-management support is provided by phone from a centralized call
center, rather than through face-to-face interaction. The self-management
support provider, usually a commercial vendor or an independent system or plan,
is external to the local health care provider, and communication with the
patient's primary care clinician varies. In most other respects, this model is
similar to the external on-the-ground model. Self-management support staff have
access to large databases. All identified patients may be offered some form of
support, but only a small subset receives personal coaching or support. In some
cases, calls may also be "inbound"—that is, patients may call the center. A
high return on investment is an important objective for the program sponsor.
Such programs are usually offered at the initiative of a large payer and are
purchased from a vendor (the following box contains an example of this model).
Example of an External Call-Center Model
This external call-center program was established by a
health plan and a disease management vendor to offer self-management support to
the plan's members. Members with asthma are identified through claims data and
provider referrals. All individuals identified are given immunization reminders
and educational materials. Claims data are used to identify a high-risk subset
of members defined by recent emergency room utilization or inpatient admissions
for asthma. This subset is offered the vendor's telephone support program on an
opt-out basis. These services include 24-hour access to telephone consultation
with a registered nurse, as well as an initial assessment by the nurse, an
individualized care plan, regularly scheduled monitoring for early signs of
problems, and assessment of asthma-related knowledge, behavior, and health
status. According to an article reporting research on this program, the
registered nurses were employed by the disease management organization,
averaged more than 20 years of experience in health care, and received specialized
training focused on one or more chronic diseases. The program was described as
based on the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's clinical practice
guidelines for asthma and emphasizes "teaching appropriate self-management
behavior that includes the avoidance of triggers; the correct use of
medications, inhaler, and peak flow meter; understanding of the signs and
symptoms of exacerbations; knowing when to seek medical assistance; smoking
cessation; avoidance of secondary smoke; and adherence to treatment plans."50 The nurses use computerized care manager software that contains standard
queries and response sets. Primary care providers are sent a summary of the
most current clinical practice guideline and alerts summarizing areas of
concern. The disease management organization sends the health plan monthly and
quarterly reports of care management measures, such as the percentage of
individuals who have an action plan, flu vaccinations, a rescue inhaler, and
who use daily controller medications.50
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Remote Model
With their person-to-person
interactions, the primary care, external, on-the-ground, and call-center models
are the primary focus of this report. However, we mention the remote model to
complete the picture of self-management support programs. Programs in the
remote model are characterized by use of the Internet and/or electronic
databases, scripted content, limited focus, and little feedback from patients.
The support is provided via technology (e.g., computer-generated mail or
automated phone calls) with no personal interaction. Reflecting their
considerably lower cost, these programs usually are offered to the entire
identified population, rather than a subset. In employer settings, this model
may extend to people identified (often through health risk assessments) as
at-risk for disease or complications.
Comparing the Models
Key experts in this field
identify different strengths and limitations with each of these models. Since
care management is the sole focus and core competence of the external programs,
self-management support may be better planned and executed than it is in
primary care settings where it is only one of a myriad of tasks that need to be
accomplished, often within severe time constraints. External program staff have
access to large plan or employer databases with claims, pharmacy, and sometimes
laboratory data. These data allow external programs to readily identify and
reach out to whole populations of patients with specified diagnoses and risks
and thereby to offer a population-based framework for self-management support.
Often these databases, in combination with technological investments such as
predictive modeling software, offer greater economies of scale to external
programs.39 In the case of external programs, patients are identified by their plan
membership or employer, rather than their primary health care provider. As the
plan or employer is at financial risk for the patients' health care, the
external models provide a way for them to target for self-management support
those individuals (and only those individuals) for whom they hold risk.
The primary care model differs from the external models
primarily with respect to its integration within the primary care practice.
This integration offers the possibility for the self-management support staff
and the physician to more closely coordinate the self-management support with
medical care and to provide support and reinforcement in both directions. Local
providers have face-to-face access to patients. Medical records are housed in
the practice setting, and self-management support staff there may have direct
access to better clinical information (e.g., test results, recorded symptoms, physical
findings, and treatment plans), as well as to discussions with clinicians.
These data offer extensive decision support to staff for providing and
customizing self-management support but are more difficult to use for
population identification if electronic medical records are not in use.
Practices implementing the chronic care model frequently create and maintain
registries (of varying capacities) of populations with specified diagnoses.
Without an electronic medical record or registry, self-management support in
primary care settings may be limited to patients who present to the office and
thus fall short of a population basis. Self-management support in the primary
care model is less likely to be focused on a population subset established
through predictive modeling.
The fact that the patient populations in the external models
usually are defined through health plan membership may make it difficult for
local providers to interface with and support the external self-management
support efforts. Given that their patients may be covered by many different
plans and some of these plans may use different external programs for different
diagnoses, a local provider organization might have 20 or more external
programs serving their patients. Some observers argue that care may be further
fragmented when employers change health plans and external programs change as a
consequence. The primary care model also may allow self-management support
staff to be better informed about local community resources and thus encourage
better patient utilization of such resources.40
A major challenge for the primary care model is the lack of
clear-cut mechanisms for primary care practices to be reimbursed for the staff
time and other resources needed to provide self-management support. While
reimbursement for external self-management support is structured through
contractual mechanisms, no similar contract arrangements are currently
negotiated with most organizations providing primary care. Current
reimbursement mechanisms do not easily accommodate direct reimbursement of
primary care staff tasked with self-management support. Local providers, in
fact, usually are not reimbursed for many care support services. Moreover,
while employer purchasers may use their contracts with plans to obtain
self-management support services or purchase such services directly from
disease management vendors, they do not contract directly with local physician
groups and clinics and thus cannot purchase the primary care model of
self-management support directly. Although plans do contract directly with
local providers, one plan's contract often covers only a small proportion of
the provider's patients.
The tradeoffs between the two external models revolve around
the advantage of in-person communication versus the disadvantage of its cost.
Proponents of the external on-the-ground model stress the effectiveness of
face-to-face interaction in getting people to participate. Arranging settings
for face-to-face support and sending health coaches out to the various
settings, on the other hand, can be considerably more expensive than a
centralized call-center approach. A key consideration in the choice of models
is the targeted population, as the higher intensity models are typically only
used for high-risk patients.
The primary care, external, and remote models are not
necessarily mutually exclusive. It has been suggested that more combinations
might be seen in the future. As an example, all of a primary care practice's
patients with chronic disease might be encouraged to participate in
self-management support sessions offered through the practice, while those
needing more support could also receive additional coaching from an external
program.
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