Assessing the Impact of Case Management on Medicaid Clients with Chronic Diseases

State Medicaid programs increasingly use case management to manage enrollees with chronic conditions who may become cost intensive for the program. The authors examined the impact of Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH)'s case management on care expenditures for Medicaid enrollees with various chronic diseases, over 2011 to 2014. The authors matched case-managed enrollees with three controls per case using health conditions and sociodemographics. Thereafter, the authors used a quasi-experimental approach to estimate how per-member-per-month costs changed following case management. Case -management appeared to result in program savings, driven largely by inpatient and emergency department cost-savings. There was noticeable variation in savings for members with different chronic conditions.