disease management

1) A systematic process of managing care of patients with specific diseases or conditions (particularly chronic conditions), including outpatient, inpatient, and ancillary services, and aimed at, among other things, reducing acute episodes, hospitalizations and variations in health care and services practices, improving health outcomes, and reducing costs.

Note: Disease management may involve continuous quality improvement or other management paradigms. It may involve a cyclical process of following professional practice protocols, measuring the resulting outcomes, feeding those results back to clinicians, and revising protocols as appropriate.

2) All the care and services with which a patient is provided.