You Could Win A DMAA Leadership Award. Here's Why.

The Disease Management Care Blog feels your pain.

Your demanding customers bear an uncanny resemblance the skeptical and frugal DMCB spouse. Her attitude about the DMCB's obviously valuable blogging is undoubtedly similar to the tough mindset you're encountering about the veracity of your decreased emergency room utilization and hospital admissions data. Unfortunately, unlike the DMCB, pretending you didn't hear won't work, so you need another way to quell the criticism and gain a competitive advantage.

The DMAA, the Care Continuum Alliance to your rescue with its nationally recognized and highly covered Leadership Awards. Once again, the competition has been opened for organizations just like yours.

Should you go for it? The DMCB says yes, but to help you answer the question for yourself, the DMCB is happy to offer this exclusive for readers only self-assessment questionaire:

Has your company:

1) partnered with a community health program, causing an insurer's claims expense to drop lower than a D.C. incumbent's approval rating, or

2) changed its branding, emphasizing how it does really the same stuff but now calls it "empowering consumer-based self care to drive optimal outcomes," (or is it branding health consumerism by optimizing outcomes based driving...? - whatever)... or

3) developed an app that cures diabetes when you hold the iPhone against a person's forehead?

Have any of your overpaid consultants pointed out that....

1) you miraculously got a special insurance rider past the actuaries and finance people upstairs and, if others knew about it, it would make health insurance a lot better for persons with chronic illness, or

2) you need to counter those big boy competitors that are hogging all the limelight by cluttering the internet with press releases, e-mails, tweets, white papers and discussion-board chatter, or

3) no health care professional's life is complete without regularly checking out the Disease Management Care Blog?

Do any of the following pertain to you?

1) your evidence-based approach has been used by a government Medicaid program and the State Medical Director is very happy, or

2) you have outcomes results that have been validated using a contemporaneous propensity-matched and quasi-experimental design using age, gender and the number of Lady Gaga tunes on a person's iPod as variables, or

3) you have data that shows liberal use of a chrome-plated handgun to noisily fire some plugs into the ceiling is an effective means of engaging providers?

Alternatively, have you discovered that.....

1) your enrollees' use of terms such as 'like,' 'good' and 'want' speaks louder than anything published in the New England Journal of Medicine, or

2) you have a physician leader in your organization that is truly rare because he or she is only occasionally an insufferably obnoxious know-it-all, or

3) your marketing employees'/consultants'/partners' use of terms like 'robust,' 'groundbreaking,' 'evidence-based,' 'unparalleled' and 'unique' is an embarrassment to the industry?

Do you....

1) agree that an awards venue for you to showcase these and other talents at a national meeting that is attended by important policy makers, potential customers and widely read bloggers is a good thing, and

2) know that the DMAA awards committees make their choices regardless of a company's size or market penetration and

3) realize that those crystal trophy baubles would sure look good in a your reception area when potential customers come-a-calling?

That's why the DMCB is happy to let you know that if any of the above is true, you should compete for a DMAA Leadership Award.

Seriously, the awards are a great way to showcase you or your company's accomplishments in the increasingly crowded of population-based health care. While the application process is rigorous, your company is worth it. While you think about applying, you should also ponder the luster of an extra added bonus: if you win, it's highly likely that you or your company will be mentioned in a certain widely admired blog that has thousands of readers and would be a leading candidate for the Best Disease Management Blog Award if only the DMAA would see fit to offer it.

A good start is to check out the DMAA Leadership Awards' web site. The deadline is June 11, so you have plenty of time to familiarize yourself with the various categories and the nifty on-line submission process.