A population-based approach to asthma disease management

Asthma disease management (DM) programmes often focus on patients who are considered to be high resource users, such as those with recent emergency department visits and/or hospitalisations, or patients who have been diagnosed with severe persistent asthma. These programmes often focus on a few patients who have acute needs, but may not identify the populations with the highest future resource use. A population-based approach to disease management focuses on identifying deficiencies in asthma management across the population diagnosed with the disease and establishes a partnership between the patient, provider and healthcare plan to improve the overall quality of asthma care. The disease management approach described in this article is population-based, and is intended to raise the standard of medical care across a spectrum of patients with asthma.