Application of a Disease Management Model to Transplantation

Abstract

Disease management has emerged as an effort to improve the quality of care for specific populations at a reduced cost. The episode of chronic care defined by transplantation conforms to all current definitions of disease management: it has a defined population, the natural course of an illness can be affected from the standpoint of both quality and quantity of life, and it is associated with high costs that can be modified by the intervention. We propose that disease management is a good model to be applied to transplantation.