About the project


Structured disease management has been proposed as a means to improve the quality of care provided to patients with chronic health problems and so improving health outcomes and reducing healthcare utilisation. Yet, the available evidence on the ability of such approaches to actually do so remains uncertain. What we know about the impact of disease management is mainly based on small studies on high-risk patients, often undertaken in academic settings. There is a need to learn more about the effects of large, population-based programmes such as those currently implemented in, for example, Germany and Austria. This requires universally accepted evaluation methods that allow for measuring and reporting programme performance in a scientifically sound fashion that is also practicable for routine operations in different contexts.

The DISMEVAL project aims to support this process through identifying and validating evaluation methods and performance measures for disease management and to make recommendations to policymakers, programme officials and researchers on best practices that are both scientifically sound and operationally feasible. The project brings together partners in seven countries that will collaborate over a period of 3 years to provide an overview of approaches to chronic care and evaluation methods across Europe and to test and validate possible evaluation approaches using existing approaches.