Costs and Benefits of Prevention and Disease Management

Abstract

Prevention and long term disease management have been added relatively recently as `new' components of a modern day total healthcare services system. The goal of primary prevention, which includes medical preventive services, lifestyle interventions and screening services, is to maintain a symptom- and disease-free population. Disease management is a systematic post-disease attempt to manage the consequences of a disease. This article focuses on the costs and savings of prevention and treatment for 7 major diseases which accounted for nearly 80% of the deaths in the US in 1990: heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, chronic bronchitis, influenza and asthma. The potential impact of prevention and disease management on costs, including productivity, represents a significant return-on-investment to society. Differences in the allocation of direct resources, however, make it nearly impossible to find a single suitable cost measure for the relative cost-effectiveness comparisons of prevention, acute treatment of disease and long term disease management. The relevant question may not be so much the relative cost effectiveness or benefits of the components of healthcare, but the benefits that an integrated approach brings to a total healthcare delivery system.Reviews-on-treatment, Pharmacoeconomics, Disease-management-programmes, Cost-analysis, Coronary-disorders, Cancer, Cancer, Diabetes-mellitus, Rheumatoid-arthritis, Chronic-bronchitis, Influenza-virus-infections, Asthma