Center for Information Therapy White Paper Shows How Population Care and Disease Management Can Improve with Information Prescriptions.

WASHINGTON -- Successful disease management across broad populations depends on adopting a new health care model. At the model's foundation is the delivery of information prescriptions to support personalized health decisions, according to a white paper by the Center for Information Therapy (CIT).

In "Improving Population Care and Disease Management Using Ix Principles," Joshua Seidman, PhD, executive director of the CIT, and Paul Wallace, MD, executive director of the Kaiser Permanente Care Management Institute, detail the new care model to show health care providers and systems how this strategy better supports patients' self-care and decision-making needs.

"One of the greatest economic and quality-of-care challenges facing the health care system is how we manage chronic care for an aging population," said Seidman. "With limited resources and changing demographics, stretching today's 'sick-care' system is no longer feasible. As a country, we must efficiently manage chronic-illness care while we provide for people's broad health care needs."

In the paper, Seidman and Wallace show how information therapy in disease management balances the needs for mass production and customized information for individuals. The authors contend that ultimately the new model better balances three levels of care: Self-care support, care management, and unavoidable sick care. Research on aspects of the model has shown that it improves consumers' health while helping them use resources more efficiently for longer periods of time.

"The current health care system is largely designed to deliver sick care in doctor's offices and hospitals," said Wallace. "There is a huge opportunity to use targeted information prescriptions to support physicians and patients in achieving better sick care, to facilitate improved 'upstream' preventive and self-care by patients themselves, as well as to enhance care delivered by health coaches and care managers."

Information therapy, or an Ix(R) program, is the timely prescription and availability of evidence-based health information to meet individuals' specific needs and support sound decision making. Unlike free-floating health content on the Internet, information therapy is delivered to people right before or after a doctor visit, test, or surgery; when they receive medicine; or at any other specific moment in care. A growing body of research shows that one of the most influential aspects of chronic care management is the degree to which consumers use targeted health information to manage their conditions.

Copies of the white paper are available at www.informationtherapy.org.

About the Center for Information Therapy

The Washington, D.C.-based Center for Information Therapy (CIT) is a division of Healthwise, a nonprofit organization that has been helping people make better health decisions since 1975. The CIT is developing the information therapy concept into the foundation for a new patient-centered health care system. For more information, visit www.informationtherapy.org or call 202-945-6810.