Does the PPACA promote disease management efforts?
Yes, but not as the disease management industry might have preferred. The PPACA encourages funds expansion of the medical home pilot programs wherein primary care practitioners (physicians, nurses) get incentives to coordinate a panel of patients and it allows employers who provide health insurance benefits to retirees ages 55-64 with high health costs ($15,000-$90,000) to receive subsidies up to 80 percent of the insurance costs IF they invest the difference in wellness and chronic care management programs. But it falls short of the Disease Management Association’s desire for explicit funding of its programs ($19 billion annually). The contention that disease management programs suffer from suboptimal results (regression to the mean) has been the basis for proponents of the medical home that puts the chronic model under the oversight of a PCP-led team. In the PPACA, expansion of the medical home model is explicit; otherwise the bill does not appear to promote the traditional model of
