Managing chronic disease

Increasingly the main business of doctors is managing patients with chronic not acute disease. Good clinical skills are needed to treat both acute and chronic disease, but organisational skills are especially important for managing patients with chronic illness. Classically only half of patients with chronic disease are identified, only half of those identified receive treatment, and only half of those treated are treated adequately, meaning that seven eighths are not being optimally managed. This is one reason for the vogue in “disease management,” a process for optimising management of those with …