Population Health Management: Fact and Fiction
by Michele von Dambrowski
Population health management is a strategy. It can be done on a small scale and in any market. Hospitals just have to do more of what they’ve been doing. Everyone will become a population health organization.
Two experts shattered those common misconceptions about the business of population health management during a presentation at the annual conference of the Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development, held recently in Chicago.
Competency, not strategy, required to manage risk
Population health management is not a strategy, but a “complex care delivery model,” says Joan Moss, chief nursing officer and senior vice president at Sg2, an analytics and market intelligence firm based in Skokie, IL. The model requires competencies not found in most hospitals today. It entails a systematic assessment of the health needs of a target population and the proactive provision of services to maintain and improve the health of that population. Under population health, those services, Moss explains, could involve supplying air conditioners to asthma patients to avoid respiratory crises.