Asthma disease management (DM) programmes often focus on patients who are considered to be high resource users, such as those with recent emergency department visits and/or hospitalisations, or patients who have been diagnosed with severe persistent asthma. These programmes often focus on a few patients who have acute needs, but may not identify the populations with the highest future resource use. A population-based approach to disease management focuses on identifying deficiencies in asthma management across the population diagnosed with the disease and establishes a partnership between the patient, provider and healthcare plan to improve the overall quality of asthma care. The disease management approach described in this article is population-based, and is intended to raise the standard of medical care across a spectrum of patients with asthma.