Chronic Disease Management In The Spotlight, Australia

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 02 Oct 2009 - 4:00 PDT

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The term Chronic Disease Management has now firmly entered the health-care vocabulary.

While nearly everyone 'knows' what it means, there are many different definitions and associated models of care.

At National and State/Territory levels, policies for improving the care of chronic conditions guide and/or drive capacity building and programmatic change have been developed

In response, the organisation of care, focused on patient-centred service delivery, is being redesigned within chronic disease management (CDM) programs to better meet the needs of people with chronic conditions.

To update pharmacists and delegates at the Pharmacy Australia Congress being held in Sydney from 15-18 October, a special presentation dealing with disease state management will be delivered by Dr Caroline Brand, Director, Clinical Epidemiology & Health Services at Melbourne Health.

Dr Brand says that while there is increasing evidence for the role of CDM programs to improve health outcomes for people with chronic disease, the evidence is limited by heterogeneity in study interventions, evaluation methods and choice of outcomes measures.

"In this presentation I will provide a background to the emergence of chronic disease management programs and an overview of the evidence for their effectiveness," Dr Brand says.

"In addition I will examine issues that may influence effective and sustainable implementation."

This year's PAC in Sydney being held at the Sydney Hilton from 15-18 October under the overarching theme of Securing Your Practice Advantage.

Source
Pharmaceutical Society of Australia

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