Does population management of chronic disease lead to lower costs of care?

The paper by Bruce Fireman and colleagues is an important contribution to the dialogue about the role of chronic disease management in quality improvement and health care cost mitigation. There is much enthusiasm for the potential impact of disease management techniques on the costs associated with chronic and complex health conditions. This Perspective describes several considerations that are important to the interpretation of studies of the cost impact of disease management and to assessments of the future usefulness of these interventions.