Physician Involvement in Disease Management as Part of the CCM

Phase I of the voluntary chronic care improvement (CCI-I) under traditional fee-for-service Medicare initiative seeks to extend the benefits of disease management to an elderly population with comorbid chronic medical conditions. Active, sustained involvement of treating physicians, a historical deficit of disease management programs, is a CCI-I program goal. During the last decade, Kaiser Permanente, anintegrated health care delivery system with more than 60 years of experience in managing the care of individuals and populations, has applied the chronic care model(CCM) to develop care management strategies for populations of patients with chronic medical conditions.