Ask the Consultants

How would you describe the relationship between health coaches and case managers who work one-on-one with a patient---competitive or synergistic?

(Roger Reed, executive vice president, chief health officer at Gordian Health Solutions) The question for us is how our lifestyle improvement programs connect to case management, or what we think of as disease management. Case management typically is for that 1 to 5 percent of the population that is pretty sick. They're using a lot of healthcare services, and really need case management, intensive work and coaching. At Gordian, our coaches typically work with the other 95 percent of the population, including the healthy people, the people who think they're healthy, and the people who are truly at risk of developing a chronic condition.

Our whole goal is to prevent migration to case management. Incrementally, if you can save money on 95 percent of the people, even if it's a nickel, it generates a lot more savings. There's really no crossover from what health coaches do to what case managers do, and our program typically butts up against its quite efficiently.