Two executives from academic medical centers discussed their organizations’ potential roles in population health management at the Becker’s Hospital Review 6th Annual Meeting May 8 in Chicago.
Academic medical centers are often where the most-specialized physicians in a geographical area practice and where the patients with the most acute needs are treated, and Daniel DeBehnke, MD, the CEO of Medical College Physicians and senior associate dean for clinical affairs at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee saw no reason for that to change. “We should maintain and develop core competencies at taking care of really sick people,” he said.
Steven Docimo, MD, the CMO of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and a professor, agreed that academic medical centers should play a role in the clinical aspects of population health management. “I think it’s our specialists who should be creating the [care] pathways used in primary care,” he said. “So that we’re all playing from the same playbook to keep patients out of our emergency room.”
Not only can academic medical centers contribute to population health management clinically, they can also use their research prowess to drive improvement in the area. “I think academic medical centers can use their research expertise to look at the data being generated and think about a population as a whole,” Dr. Docimo said.
Finally, academic medical centers can use their influence on the future generation of clinicians to improve population health efforts, according to Dr. Docimo. “We’re training the next generation of physicians and nurses, and I think we have an obligation to incorporate population health management in education programs.”
However, both executives noted that right now, not enough is being done to educate future providers on caring for patients in a population health model, including around new payment systems and clinical integration. “It’s not as robust as it should be,” Dr. DeBehnke said. “We have to accelerate.”
