The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) and McKesson Health Solutions, a business unit of McKesson Corporation, today announced that the state's disease management (DM) program helped the state achieve a net savings of nearly $34 million in healthcare costs during the first year of the three-year program.

HFS and McKesson launched the multi-disciplinary DM program, YourHealthcare Plus, on July 1, 2006, to assist disabled adult Illinois Medicaid beneficiaries and children with asthma and their caregivers who are part of the Family Health Medicaid program.

Altogether, more than 220,000 Illinois residents are eligible.

The program, during its first year, reduced inappropriate inpatient and emergency department admissions and improved key clinical indicators. Across all managed chronic diseases, decreases in inpatient admissions
ranged from 8.5% to nearly 20% and decreases in emergency department admissions ranged from more than 1% to 13%. Self-reported flu vaccination rates for program participants increased an average of 18% during the first year across all managed chronic conditions.