Non-Physician Health Care Providers for the Treatment and Care of the Chronically III (focusing on DMP diagnoses)

Background This systematic review will investigate the question of how non-physician health care providers may be involved in the care and treatment of patients with chronic disease and which role they could play within the scope of the German Disease Management Programmes (DMP). Methods This article is limited to the German DMP diagnoses asthma, COPD, coronary heart disease, and type-1 and -2 diabetes mellitus. Several databases were systematically searched to find national and international studies with interventions carried out by non-physician health care providers such as nurses, dieticians, physiotherapists or occupational therapists. Results More than 300 studies and reviews were included in this systematic review. Nurses and dieticians were by far the prevailing professional groups performing the largest number of the interventions identified. Transferring the results of the literature review to the German setting, non-physician health care providers could both undertake certain tasks on their own responsibility and provide other services in support of the medical treatment of the chronically ill. Some interventions are given as examples.