Wennberg DE, Marr A, Lang L, O’Malley S, Bennett G. A randomized trial of a telephone care-management strategy. NEJM. 2010 Sep 23;363.
This article reviews a research study where patients with selected medical conditions and predicted high health care costs were given telephone-based care-management coaching to instruct them about SDM, self-care and behavioral change. This research goes beyond previous care-management studies because it included patients at risk for a preference-sensitive condition decision in the future, and the health coaching included shared decision making and access to patient decision aids. The average monthly medical and pharmacy costs per person in the enhanced-support group were 3.6% lower than those in the usual-support group, largely due to a 10.1% reduction in annual hospital admissions.
