In reality, most disease management programs don't supplant the central role physicians' play in caring for patient with chronic illness. Instead, they increase compliance with a prescribed regimen and monitor patients between visits to their physician. Based on observing successes and failures of many programs that have tried to engage physicians, we have developed six core tactics for achieving buy-in for disease management programs. Physicians generally respond positively when they review outcomes data from programs that have significantly improved quality of care and reduced costs. Considering the limited time most physicians can devote to learning about disease management, educational efforts must be varied in form and repetitive.
Doctors make decisions in an autonomous fashion, but also respect the opinions of experts.
One effective approach to enlisting champions is to create a physician advisory committee for each disease management program. The first element is to articulate the value proposition offered by an experienced vendor. Having one or more companies present their programs to the interested group of physicians easily accomplishes this. The second element is to use this data to create a set of criteria that the physicians must meet. In most cases, provider organizations do not have the infrastructure to initially meet these criteria.