Modeling the costs of case management in long-term care.

A conceptual approach to developing models for analyzing cost is applied to case management in long-term care. This conceptual approach uses four dimensions to classify case management programs. The application results in identifying five case management cost models. Empirical measures of case management costs and a set of determinants of the within-model variation in these costs are suggested for each model. This article discusses several policy relevant hypotheses that could be addressed by the empirical implementation of these cost models.