Eighth Annual DM Colloquium

The Eighth Annual DM Colloquium was held last week in Philadelphia. Nearly 300 persons from all over the country, and overseas, joined us at the Hyatt at Penn's Landing for three days of presentations, workshops, brainstorming sessions, and some fun too. We heard from leaders in the public and private sectors that there is convergence of Disease Management, Prevention and Wellness. These themes are also connecting to work site wellness, productivity improvement and employee satisfaction. The entire field appears to me to be in flux and our conference highlighted all of these changes. Specific issues included a discussion of the controversy surrounding the Medicare Health Support program, measuring ROI in DM, the impact of health reform on DM and physician leadership for DM, among many other topics. Please view the video from my opening address to the assembled crowd from Monday May 19th where I reviewed the entire chronic care waterfront. I am interested in views of the meeting and you can download the presentations from www.dmcolloquium.com. Thanks again and I look forward to your comments. DAVID NASH

Catholic Healthcare Partners Board are on board with Quality & Patient Safety

Disease Management, prevention and wellness

Good morning and happy Friday. I have been thinking a good deal about the convergence of several seemingly disparate areas---namely, disease management, wellness and prevention. I am privileged to serve on the board of a company called ITRAX or you may know them as CHD. In any event, they are practicing worksite wellness and prevention and getting publishable results. In addition to ITRAX, my work with Informedix, has also lead me to believe that we can make a difference with patients about compliance and adherance to medication. If we can bring together the disease management world, the prevention people and all the corporate wellness, build the research base, and effectively implement these tools, maybe we can really turn around the cost of obesity, smoking and the like. For me, I think this stuff is frankly, "too important to be left to the doctor". Meaning, we are not set up to let the docs do this work and they are not good at it anyway. We need a new model and maybe this combination of talents and tools, with the tripod of DM, prevention and wellness, is the way to go. What do you all think?? Don't forget to join us at our national Disease Management Colloquium, here in Philly, on May 19, 20 and 21. Thanks, DAVID NASH