Annals of family medicine
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Annals of family medicine · Jan 2005
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative StudyRCT of a care manager intervention for major depression in primary care: 2-year costs for patients with physical vs psychological complaints.
Depression care management for primary care patients results in sustained improvement in clinical outcomes with diminishing costs over time. Clinical benefits, however, are concentrated primarily in patients who report to their primary care clinicians psychological rather than exclusively physical symptoms. This study proposes to determine whether the intervention affects outpatient costs differentially when comparing patients who have psychological with patients who have physical complaints. ⋯ Depression intervention for a 2-year period produced observable clinical benefit with decreased outpatient costs for depressed patients who complain of psychological symptoms. It produced limited clinical benefit with increased costs, however, for depressed patients who complain exclusively of physical symptoms, suggesting the need for developing new intervention approaches for this group.