How do disease management and case management differ in terms of scope and approach?

• A. Disease management uses proactive population-based strategies for chronic conditions; case management coordinates care for individual high-need patients, often episodic.
• B. Disease management is solely clinical trials; case management handles administrative tasks.
• C. Disease management focuses on acute care only; case management focuses on long-term chronic care.
• D. They are identical approaches to care coordination.

Answer: (A)

The main idea is the difference in scope and approach between managing disease at a population level and coordinating care for an individual patient. Disease management uses proactive, population-based strategies for chronic conditions, deploying standardized care plans, risk stratification, and outcome measures to improve health across a defined group. Case management, on the other hand, focuses on coordinating services for a single, high-need patient across multiple providers and settings, and it tends to be episodic—intense during transitions or crises and then scaled back as the situation stabilizes. Both aim to improve outcomes and control costs, but disease management operates broadly with systematic protocols, while case management is personalized and flexible to an individual’s care needs. Some choices misstate the scope or nature of these approaches, such as claiming disease management is limited to trials or acute care, or that the two are identical.