Within the strategic focus Dr. Friedman described — the transition from individual care to care for whole communities — there are two main approaches to population health, according to Roy Beveridge, MD, senior vice president and CMO of Humana.
“Some people think about population health as just a payment methodology — they think about shared savings and reducing costs around the edges,” said Dr. Beveridge. “When I think of population health, and when Humana does the same, we’re talking about managing not just the periphery, but taking care of a population on a long-term basis and really affecting the health of that group.”
Dr. Beveridge gave the example of caring for Type 2 diabetes patients. Using a financially driven definition, population health would mean considering the least expensive insulin or treatment plan. Using a broader, community-focused definition would mean trying to influence diabetes patients to make healthier choices regarding their nutrition and physical activities.
Even this example, however, demonstrates how multiple terms describing population health can get out of hand, even if it’s well-intentioned. For some hospitals, the greatest population health challenge is diabetes, for others it might be drug abuse, homelessness or violent crime. If the industry began creating terms for every “type” of population health — financial, community-focused or otherwise — we could spend the rest of eternity hung up on the words rather than real actions that could improve peoples’ health.
So does the industry need more definitions for “population health,” or more terms in our lexicon to differentiate between various population health efforts? No. What the industry needs is to forget the semantics and just work on transitioning its strategic focuses from individuals to whole communities.
“The bottom line is that whether we use the term population health, community health or something else, all the stakeholders in the provision of healthcare must work together with the patient to keep people as healthy as possible over their lifespan,” said Dr. Friedman.
More articles on population health:
5 workflow and technology elements of population health management programs
Fostering hospital-community outreach initiatives: 4 opportunities
HIMSS report: 4 findings on population health initiatives
