In the blog post, the coalition’s CEO Leslie Graham and Manager of Quality Improvement and Outcomes Barbara Eldridge offered three lessons they learned regarding population health efforts, summarized below.
1. Narrow the focus of each project, but not the project portfolio. Not every project a hospital launches has to address all three dimensions of the triple aim — population health, patient experience and cost reduction — simultaneously. Instead, a hospital’s portfolio of projects should achieve all three aims.
2. Define and identify your population. First and foremost, hospitals should define their target population by asking questions such as, is it an enrolled population or a geographic population? After the population has been identified, the hospital can move on to what type of governance would work best and what projects should be included in the portfolio.
3. Don’t underestimate patient feedback. By interviewing patients about their experience and the reasons behind their care decisions (i.e. visiting an emergency department instead of seeking primary care, etc.), hospitals can develop more effective interventions.
“Can we move hospitals from a purely medical model to an approach that helps people reach their most cherished goals? We believe we’re moving in the right direction,” wrote the blog authors. “If we take a long-term view and stick with it across a portfolio of projects, we’ll improve population health and the patient experience while also reducing the total costs of care.”
More articles on population health:
RWJF seeks population health ideas from providers for $6.6M research initiative
Who is overseeing population health management? 3 things to know
Population health partnerships: 5 things to know
