OBJECTIVES: To assess the impact of an intervention helping physicians in the management of asthma patients (APs). METHODS: A program was designed to help physicians in the management of APs that includes an education program (EP) and a computer application (CA) advising on therapeutic decisions. The EP was devoted to teach patients to distinguish worsening symptoms requiring a hospital emergency visit from those that could be self-managed, and to ensure correct self-administration/self-control of therapy. The CA implements the Spanish recommendations for the management of APs that physicians may follow at their discretion. A naturalistic, controlled, cluster-randomized study was designed to assess the long-term (one-year) impact of the intervention on health-related quality of life as measured by the St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ), on direct and indirect costs, and on satisfaction and clinical outcomes. We also assessed physicians’ adherence to the recommendations. Twenty-two physicians (11 GPs , 11 pneumologists) were randomly assigned to either intervention (I) or control (C = standard practice) groups, and were expected to enroll 10 adult patients with persistent asthma (ATS criteria). RESULTS: Two physicians withdrew after randomization (I:1, C:1) but before starting recruitment. A total of 200 patients ( I:100, C:100) were recruited and 173 completed the study (C: 86, I: 87). The ITT analysis showed a greater reduction of SGRQ values in group I that was significant at the 5% level or marginally non-significant (p = 0.06) depending on the method of analysis, but always clinically significant. Resource consumption and some clinical variables (such as the number of symptom-free days and nights) favored group I (p <0.05). The recommendations were adopted in about 63% of the cases but this seemed to depend on disease severity. CONCLUSIONS: The intervention improved QoL, clinical outcomes and resource consumption. The Spanish recommendations for the management of APs should be revised for severe cases.