There have been unsavory rumors flying around the internet that disease management as practiced today may not be all that effective. I’m not going to reveal who started these rumors but her name rhymes with Archelle Georgiou. This person says disease management is “dead.” Since there are still many disease management departments operating around the country apparently oblivious to their demise (and disease management departments are people too, you know), I suspect this commentator was using the word “dead” figuratively, as in: “The second he forgot the third cabinet department, Rick Perry was dead.” (Another example of presumably figurative speech in the death category would be: “After he denounced gays while wearing the Brokeback Mountain jacket, you could stick a fork in him.”)
And if the rhymes-with-Archelle commentator intends “dead” as a synonym for “not in very good shape,” she certainly has a point. Not only does she have a point, but I would add more items to her list of reasons for the field’s current troubles:
(1) The interval between diagnosis (the point where readiness to change is usually greatest) and successful patient contact can exceed three months;
(2) Predictive modeling “risk scores” that tell you only how sick someone was, dressed up as a “risk score,” not how sick they will be, even though they aren’t already high utilizers;
(3) Some interventions are so expensive that they exceed the cost of the disease;