EVIDENCE-BASED DISEASE MANAGEMENT

Disease management is an approach to patient care that emphasizes coor dinated, comprehensive care along the continuum of disease and across health care delivery systems, Evidence-based medicine is an approach t o practice and teaching that integrates pathophysiological rationale, caregiver experience, and patient preferences with valid and current c linical research evidence, Using diabetes mellitus as an example, we d escribe the importance of evidence-based medicine to the development o f disease management programs, We present a method for developing and implementing evidence-based clinical guidelines, clinical pathways, an d algorithms and describe the creation of systems to measure and repor t processes and outcomes that could drive quality improvement in diabe tes care, Multidisciplinary teams are ideally suited to develop, lead, and implement evidence-based disease management programs, since they play an essential role in the preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic decisions for patients with diabetes throughout the course of their di sease.