Care management program evaluation: constituents, conflicts, and moves toward standardization

Care management program evaluations bring together constituents from finance, medicine, and social sciences. The differing assumptions and scientific philosophies that these constituents bring to the task often lead to frustrations and even contentions. Given the forms and variations of care management programs, the difficulty associated with program outcomes measurement should not be surprising. It is no wonder then that methods for clinical and economic evaluations of program efficacy continue to be debated and have yet to be standardized. We describe these somewhat hidden processes, examine where the industry stands, and provide recommendations for steps to standardize evaluation methodology.