Joerg Klewer, MD PhD, Christine Buck, MD PhD, Judith Pelikan, MD PhD MPH, Sylvia Demme, PhD, Christoph Romes, MEc, and Christian Gawlik, MD PhD Msc. Federal Insurance Authority, Villemombler Str. 76, Bonn, 53123, Germany, 0049-228-619-1929, Joklewer@aol.com

Implementation of disease-management-programs (DMPs) for chronically ill patients insured by statutory health insurances in Germany will result in a high number of DMPs, including millions of patients. All DMPs have to be accredited by the Federal Insurance Authority. The purpose of the presentation is to explain and to discuss the evaluation concept for nationwide DMPs (e.g. diabetes, breast-cancer).To evaluate and to compare different DMPs, the Federal Insurance Authority has developed general standards. Each evaluation comprises a period of three years and is the base for re-accreditation. Evaluation standards cover three parts: health care, economic aspects and quality of life. Evaluation of health care covers demographic data, medical history, the health care process and outcome in patients’ health. Evaluation of economic aspects covers costs produced (e.g. administration costs) and reduced (e.g. reduction of sick-leaves and hospital admissions). Quality of life is measured by using the SF-36 and the EQ-5D. Additionally, the results have to be displayed in cohorts, according to the number of six months periods since enrolment in the DMP. In future evaluation of the DMPs, all data of the DMPs for one disease will be merged to one file, to exclude bias due to age, gender and selection of disease severity.

Learning Objectives:

• After the presentation the participants should be informed about the concepts of evaluation of disease-management-programs run by the statutory health insurances in Germany.
• Disease-management-programs are meanwhile an important part of the German health care system. The option to join disease-management-programs was implemented n the year 2002 by the federal government for patients with chronic diseases. Within a short time millions of patients insured by the statutory health insurances started to participate in disease-management-programs. Re-accreditation of each disease-management-program depends on the results of the evaluation after three years.
• Due to the unique structure of the German disease-management-programs, it will be very important to discuss this issue on the APHA Meeting with public health experts familiar with evaluation of different disease-management-programs. By this, new ideas to create evaluations concepts of disease-management-programs can be developed.

Keywords: Disease Management, Chronic Diseases

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.