Subject areas |
Research questions and needs |
Patient
identification and triage |
What are the best methods for identifying patients who
could benefit from self-management support programs? |
What are the best methods for identifying those patients
who are most amenable to making changes? |
How can administrative data be used more precisely and
quickly in patient identification? |
What is the profile of patients who will get the biggest
benefit and return from using monitoring devices? |
What are the accuracy, utility, and impact of different
severity stratification methods? |
Patient
outreach |
What incentives are most effective in getting people to
participate and change their behavior? |
What are the best methods for reaching and engaging
patients identified as eligible for self-management support? |
What are the characteristics of people who naturally try
to behave in health-promoting ways? Can knowledge of these characteristics
be used to engage people who do not naturally behave in health-promoting
ways? |
Does the speed of a program's patient engagement
independently predict program success in a short time period? |
Protocols
for providing self-management support |
What programming protocols are most effective in getting
people to self-manage? |
What are the best methods for motivating and supporting
patients? |
Can qualitative research help us better understand the
interaction between support providers and patients and the various aspects of
such interaction (convenience, ready availability, comfort, human contact)
that contribute to effectiveness? |
What guidelines (meta-guidelines) are appropriate for
managing care and providing support regardless of what condition is being
treated? |
What are the best methods for prioritizing steps or
processes of self-management support based on treatment effectiveness and
cost effectiveness? |
Relationships
with physicians |
What are effective approaches to integrating physicians with
self-management support processes and providers? |
What are effective ways to increase collaborative care? |
Program
design |
Which programmatic components work under what
circumstances? Which do not work? |
What combination of services work and which combinations
work better in what situations? |
How do different components compare with respect to
effectiveness; for example, what is the relative effectiveness of in-person
coaching vs. telephone coaching vs. online interactive coaching? |
What are useful methods of prioritizing and combining
components? |
What skills promote behavior change? |
What are appropriate role definitions in self-management
support? For example, what are the skills needed to provide remote telephone
support, and how do these skills differ from those needed to provide
face-to-face support? |
What kind of experience (for example, specialist or
generalist) is best for self-management support staffing? |
What training (content and length) provides for the most
effective self-management support staff? |
How should self-management support providers’ performance
be evaluated? |
What are the best self-management support tools to put
into toolkits? |
Evaluation |
What are sound analytic methods for evaluating clinical
and economic outcomes of self-management support programs? |
To what extent does continuous quality monitoring using
administrative data have the potential to improve program quality and
efficiency? How do database characteristics impact this potential? |
What is the extent and effect of selection bias in these
programs? |
What is the impact of programs on health care expenses
within specified time periods (for example, in the first year and/or the
first 5 years)? What cost-savings are realized? |
What return on investment can be expected over different
time periods? |
What is the alignment of cost with use and quality? |
What is the impact of self-management support programs on
productivity and absenteeism? What are good methods for evaluating this
relationship? |
Other |
How can the different movements represented by advocates
of the chronic care model, disease management model, electronic medical
records, and consumer-directed health care fit together? |
To what extent can technology and economies of scale be
leveraged to produce cost-effective programs for underserved populations? |