The process of aging is different today from how it used to be. It is fraught with the incidence of chronic disease and the implications of a much older population. For example, in 1980, just 5.6 million Americans faced diabetes.  By 2009, the latest year for which data is available, the number had jumped to nearly 20 million, and we're seeing no signs of abatement.  And that doesn't even touch on the millions more dealing with conditions such as congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or cancer.

This means that senior care and healthcare providers — from assisted living facilities to hospitals to payers — need to reframe how they take care of the aging population. We need a paradigm shift from acute care to proactively managing disease. Today, “disease management” too often means dealing with acute crises related to a disease; it too often involves admitting a person to a hospital and trying to understand what is failing within his or her body at the crisis point. 

Senior care is driving towards a more proactive model, and this is our only real option as the population continues to age. The “managing disease” paradigm shift should pull on several key values:

-        Managing disease should be proactive. By staying proactive, we can manage disease responsibly, catch potential issues before they turn into crises, and help prevent the progression of a health problem or stem the risk of a fall.

-        Managing disease should be timely. Individuals need to be reached at “teachable moments,” when they're primed and motivated to start adopting healthy behaviors.

-        Managing disease should be engaging. People don't change their behaviors or listen to their doctors unless they're engaged in their care. Oftentimes, this can be as simple as giving them their own health data and explaining – through visuals and other engaging messages – how their actions lead to health deterioration or changes in vital signs.

-        Managing disease should reach people where they are. We must stop relying only on hospitals and clinics to treat patients, and start shifting non-urgent care into homes and communities. This is truly the only way to effectively manage disease in an ongoing fashion.

-        Managing disease should be coordinated. There are so many crucial players in the process of managing disease – from multiple doctors and nurses to senior care staff, families, friends, and the patients themselves.  Coordinating these individuals and creating team-based care is at the heart of effectively managing disease.

Tomorrow, managing disease should mean managing health and stopping the progression of a disease before it gets to the point of hospitalization. It should imply community-based models of care that engage older adults, loved ones, and the variety of clinical teams that come in and out of patients' lives in a coordinated fashion. It should harness the powers of technology to dispel the limitations of time and location and scale to massive population bases. It should pull from other fields outside of medicine – health psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy, behavioral economics, and influence – to determine how to truly change patients' lives and lead to a healthier, more effective healthcare system.

Shannon McIntyre is the communications manager at Intel-GE Care Innovations™.