Population health management wish list for today’s hospitals

Population health has been around for a long time. So why does it seem to be such a hot topic right now?

As we enter an environment of value-based care — where quality and outcomes are more important than quantity — population health management has taken on new meaning and importance. We’re moving away from reactive healthcare and focusing more on proactive, preventative care for the populations we serve.

Here are my top four “wish list” items for ideal population health management. Don’t fret — they’re more attainable than you think!

1. Understand the population you serve

Dig into available data to identify and learn more about your population — not just who they are, but why they’ve been admitted and what the next acute care visit might be. Meet your populations where they are from a communication standpoint, like direct mail versus text messages depending on their age group, to encourage regular visits and alleviate more severe encounters.

2. Elevate collaborative care

There’s no consistency from one hospital to the next to regulate how an electronic health record is being used, making it more difficult for allied health systems to share data and physicians to know what happened in the last episode of care. It is important to understand the way these systems work so you can put together a plan to collect data across disparate systems.

3. Take advantage of point-of-care decision support

Sharing clinical information and getting it into the system sooner helps providers make the right care decisions. Tools like point-of-care scanning make it easier to access data when and where you need it most.

4. Access multi-document analysis, easily

Electronic health records were meant to be transactional, not a tool for reporting. As we lean more on data for outcome-driven care, it can be challenging to get out all of the information that was put in originally.

Is your hospital doing everything it can to provide quality care for its patients? Now’s the time.