Population Health Survey

One of the themes we’ve been writing a lot about recently is incorporating more social and behavioral health data into the EHR and healthcare. I think we’re at the start of a trend around using data in healthcare that is not going to stop. While we currently have more access to data than ever, it feels more like getting beat down by a wave on the beach than it does surfing a wave that provides an amazing thrill and speed. I guess I’m saying that we haven’t learned to harness the power of the wave data yet.

Much of the work we’re doing with healthcare data is around population health. I was intrigued by the findings of a population health survey done by Xerox. Here are some of the insights they shared with me:

What is population health? Definition components were ranked in the following order:

  1. Facilitates care across the health continuum
  2. Supports providing the highest quality of care at the lowest cost
  3. Uses actionable insight for patient care based on a variety of data
  4. Targets a specific population of individuals
  5. Enables patient engagement

Is population health management necessary?

100 percent of polled providers agree that population health management is necessary as the U.S. shifts to value-based care. 81 percent indicated they “strongly agree” with the statement, while the remaining 19 percent indicated they “somewhat agree” with the statement.

What is driving population health? Driving factors were ranked in the following order:

  1. Improved health outcomes
  2. Improved patient relationships and experiences
  3. Cost containment
  4. Increased revenue opportunity
  5. Brand and competition with others in market

What challenges exist in population health management? Challenges were ranked in the following order:

  1. Data management and integration capabilities
  2. Lack of financial incentives, too much risk
  3. Poor care coordination across care providers
  4. Creating actionable intelligence from available data
  5. Lack of provider expertise or knowledge
  6. Low patient engagement

When will population health management be a reality?

81 percent of polled providers believe their organizations will deliver fully scaled population health management programs within 5 years, which includes 16 percent who indicated they already are.

What this survey tells me is that we’re still trying to figure out population health. Plus, people have a really broad definition of what’s considered population health. Does that mean the word no longer has much meaning?

The final stat might be the most telling. Almost everyone believed that their organization would be able to deliver a fully scaled population health management program. Maybe there’s some arrogance bias in who participated in the survey, but I’m quite sure that we’ll have a lot more stragglers in the population health world than 18%. It’s taken us how many years to get 60% EHR adoption? I won’t be surprised if population health takes us even longer.

All of that said, the best organizations are going to leverage healthcare data to improve population health. That’s a powerful concept which isn’t going away ever.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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