A population-based approach to asthma disease management

Asthma disease management (DM) programmes often focus on patients who are c onsidered to be high resource users, such as those with recent emergency de partment visits and/or hospitalisations, or patients who have been diagnose d with severe persistent asthma. These programmes often focus on a few pati ents who have acute needs, but may not identify the populations with the hi ghest future resource use. A population-based approach to disease managemen t focuses on identifying deficiencies in asthma management across the popul ation diagnosed with the disease and establishes a partnership between the patient, provider and healthcare plan to improve the overall quality of ast hma care. The disease management approach described in this article is popu lation-based, and is intended to raise the standard of medical care across a spectrum of patients with asthma.