Explain the Importance of Chronic Disease Management

O’Connor: Chronic disease management is really the key to health care in my opinion. It’s that 10% of our population that accounts for 75% plus of the spend—that is the problem. Doing wellness programs and telling a healthy person to run more isn’t as impactful to the challenges we have in the health care community and on the health spend of our country.

More and more focus needs to be on those chronic patients. Doing whatever we can to improve their outcomes ultimately and balancing out the pharmacy spend versus medical spend and getting the ‘teeter totter’ to tilt a little more in the right direction.