The cost of diabetes in the presence of comorbid conditions.

Disease management programs usually focus on the target disease, with little emphasis on clinical comorbidity. The research presented here used retrospective analysis to determine the incremental costs of diabetes to a state Medicaid program when diabetes occurred with other common chronic illnesses. The study revealed that the incremental costs of diabetes were influenced by the costs of the chronic illnesses associated with diabetes. The following methodology is intended to improve the benchmarking and evaluation of diabetes disease management programs.