Social Service Agency Designing Programs For High-Risk Patients

HARTFORD (AP) — The state Department of Social Services (DSS) will begin a series of disease management programs, focusing on high-risk patients with diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure, and other chronic illnesses to lower health care costs, the governor’s office announced recently.

“We need to be constantly searching for efficiencies in our health care system,” Governor M. Jodi Rell said in a statement. “The most effective way to reduce health care costs is by concentrating on individuals with chronic health conditions through systemic disease management programs.”

The governor has authorized $2 million for DSS to implement the programs, where medical personnel work closely with patients to help them manage their medical conditions.

At least 40 other states have, or are planning, disease management programs for residents with asthma, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and other chronic diseases, Gov Rell said. Managing such diseases can save the health care system costly emergency room visits and hospitalization.

According to the Center on an Aging Society at Georgetown University, people with chronic health conditions generally use more health care services, including visits to physicians, hospital care, and prescription drugs.

Under Gov Rell’s proposal, DSS will solicit bids of $1.5 million for pilot programs for hypertension, obesity, and diabetes. For asthma treatment and prevention, the state already has a program titled “Easy Breathing,” currently funded at $500,000.

To expand that, DSS will transfer an additional $500,000 of its 2007 projected surplus to the Department of Public Health. The money will be used to train pediatric medical personnel to better identify children with severe asthma.

The Easy Breathing program began in Hartford in 1998 and is now being used by more than 300 primary care pediatricians in 113 private practices and 14 urban clinics in 39 cities and towns in Connecticut.

More than 63,000 children have been enrolled in Easy Breathing and more than 17,000 children with asthma have been identified. Of those 17,000, 93 percent now have a written asthma treatment plan, compared to the five to ten percent before the program began, Dr Michelle Cloutier, director of The Asthma Center at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, told the Connecticut Medicaid Managed Care Council.

Easy Breathing has been credited with reducing hospitalizations and emergency room visits for young asthma patients.

“Funding this program at $1 million on an ongoing basis will reap benefits not only for the children with asthma, but save precious health care dollars which would have been spent on more expensive care if the conditions deteriorated,” Gov Rell said.