A successful population health strategy must comprise several components, from a highly trained IT staff to strong levels of patient engagement.
During Becker's Hospital Review's 5th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle event in Chicago on Oct. 10, panelists gathered to discuss population health initiatives in hospitals and health systems and how to boost patient engagement. Laura Dyrda, editor-in-chief at Becker's Healthcare, moderated the panel, which featured the following participants:
· Babatope Fatuyi, MD, chief medical information officer at University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston-UTHealth.
· Andrew Bland, MD, vice president and CMO at Hamilton Health Care System in Dalton, Ga.
· Anthony Dias, vice president of data services at Connecticut Hospital Association.
Here are five takeaways from the session:
1. Hospitals and health systems are increasing time spent on data aggregation and patient stratification initiatives. Providers are devoting time to patient stratification or risk stratification because it helps identify patients based on which category of population health they present as. Detecting patients who are lower or zero risk helps providers manage and teach these individuals self-care management methods, which ultimately aims to prevent this patient population from becoming rising or ultimate risk.
2. In today's culture, across industries, consumers are becoming more skeptical of how companies will use their data. Patients at hospitals and health systems worry about this, which can hinder healthcare organizations' opportunity to leverage their data for population health insights. To get ahead of the issue and foster strong patient engagement, providers must actively explain to patients the protections and encryptions they have enacted to protect their data. This will make patients feel more safe sharing their data.
3. When rolling out a new population health initiative, hospitals and health systems should onboard personnel who have the proper data training and experience to help implement initial high-level engagements. Individuals with aggregated data programming experience who can provide insights on stratification referral patterns at an aggregated level can help boost more successful patient engagement.
4. While healthcare organizations need staff with data experience to support population health efforts, it does not necessarily mean the hospital or health system must onboard an entirely new staff. Teaching current employees how to use new technology for population health helps these individuals develop a diverse skill set and also eliminates the need to continuously transition staff each time a new technology is introduced.
5. Hospitals and health systems will continue to leverage automation and artificial intelligence technology to draw population health insights from real-time patient data as opposed to waiting longer for claims data.