Development and applications of an outcomes assessment framework for care management programs in learning health systems.

PURPOSE: To develop and apply an outcomes assessment framework (OAF) for care management programs in health care delivery settings. BACKGROUND: Care management (CM) refers to a regimen of organized activities that are designed to promote health in a population with particular chronic conditions or risk profiles, with focus on the triple aim for populations: improving the quality of care, advancing health outcomes, and lowering health care costs. CM has become an integral part of a care continuum for population-based health care management. To sustain a CM program, it is essential to assure and improve CM effectiveness through rigorous outcomes assessment. To this end, we constructed the OAF as the foundation of a systematic approach to CM outcomes assessment. INNOVATIONS: To construct the OAF, we first systematically analyzed the operation process of a CM program; then, based on the operation analysis, we identified causal relationships between interventions and outcomes at various implementation stages of the program. This set of causal relationships established a roadmap for the rest of the outcomes assessment. Built upon knowledge from multiple disciplines, we (1) formalized a systematic approach to CM outcomes assessment, and (2) integrated proven analytics methodologies and industrial best practices into operation-oriented CM outcomes assessment. CONCLUSION: This systematic approach to OAF for assessing the outcomes of CM programs offers an opportunity to advance evidence-based care management. In addition, formalized CM outcomes assessment methodologies will enable us to compare CM effectiveness across health delivery settings.