By Fred Goldstein, MS, Gregg Masters, MPH and Alexandria Skoufalos, EdD
This week we are thrilled to have special guest hosts who have put together an amazing blog for the #hcldr community. We want to thank Fred Goldstein, MS, Gregg Masters, MPH, Alexandria Skoufalos, Ed, and David B. Nash, MD, MBA for bringing this to #hcldr this week! You can find their bios below, at the end of the blog. Without further adieu, on to their blog.
The State of the Market in Population Health – Where are We?
The concept of population health has been around for a while. Framed in 2002 by the landmark work of David Kindig, MD, PhD and Greg Stoddart, PhD, ‘What Is Population Health?’, the then-nascent industry was defined as:
…the health outcome of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes with the group,” and takes into account the policies, social factors and interventions that influence them.
While a generic and perhaps ‘roomy’ definition, the vision variably segments populations geographically by community, country or further by employer, payor class or even health plan – both government sponsored or in the commercial domain. In fact, a typical population health ‘enterprise’ can be classically defined as a ‘health plan’ where the members and covered dependents are the population to direct all outcomes efforts or interventions.
While the industry keeps evolving and many other players enter the space — including a growing pool of schools, colleges or departments of population health — from a strategy or footprint point of view there is considerable variability on how to implement, measure and optimize a health system, health plan or other sponsoring entity’s specific population health program.
We will be tracking these developments, trends and innovations at the 20th Population Health Colloquium in Philadelphia on March 30 through April 1. The program was developed in concert with Jefferson College of Population Health, the Colloquium’s exclusive academic partner and the nation’s first college devoted to the discipline.
We expect a large a diverse audience at the Colloquium, as those tasked with a specific responsibility for population health – both strategy and implementation — gather to share insights, best practices and generally advance the state of the art.
The program includes session that will explore how the ‘social determinants of health’ drive the outcomes of specific populations, including moving the needle towards the ‘triple aim’; discuss the complexity of re-tooling today’s largely siloed delivery system focused on acute care, into a proactive enterprise that values and promotes health (as opposed to the episodic treatment of disease).
Over the past year we’ve seen continued forays into population heath initiatives on the part of health plans, providers and communities. This is a trend we expect will accelerate and expand as we learn from experience. Last year we posed these four questions to the healthcare leader (HCLDR) Community:
- What does it mean to be “engaged” in your health? Thinking of yourself in a population health program, how would you define engagement? And, based on that, how would you measure it?
- Who should be responsible for overseeing a population health program?
- What can IT and other technologies do to better assist population health programs?
- What interventions would work for you or those you know to improve their health?
This year, we wanted to focus the HCLDR tweet chat on the larger issues associating population health with the efforts to improve health at a community level and reduce costs or otherwise move the needle on the triple aim via the advancement of a value-based healthcare delivery and financing system.
First some background
Since last year, the continued escalation of healthcare costs have resulted in more engagement on the part of healthcare systems, government, employers and certainly the community at large.
A piece by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn included this nugget from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s recemt presentation to the Senate Banking Committee:
The outcomes are perfectly average for a first-world nation, but we spend 6 percent to 7 percent of GDP more than other countries,” Powell told lawmakers. “So it’s about the delivery. That’s a lot of money that you are effectively spending and getting nothing.
Per the National Health Expenditure Projections 2018-2027 by CMS, one major finding is that
… national health spending is projected to grow at an average rate of 5.5 percent per year for 2018-27 and to reach nearly $6.0 trillion by 2027.
Six trillion dollars…that’s a lot of money!
Population Health is being touted as the panacea to create cost and quality improvements. We’ve seen organizations inside and outside the healthcare system coming together in an effort to solve a particular health issue. Examples include: Humana with their ‘Bold Goal’ (listen to recent interview with Humana leaders Caraline Coats, MHSA and Andrew Renda, MD, MPH on PopHealth Week) and the Blue Zone programs, and the YMCA, Lyft and others (expanding access to medical care, exercise programs, and other services).
How can we understand whether these programs having an impact? Would the projected costs be even higher without these interventions?
So join us on Tuesday February 25th at 8:30pm ET (for your local time click here) when we will be discussing the following questions:
- T1 Do you think we have made progress on population health since last year? Cite specific examples of successful pop-health work you know about.
- T2 Which approach(es) do you think are having the most effect on healthcare/population health?
- T3 Will the trend toward Population Health bend/reduce costs? Why?
- T4 Are you personally optimistic or pessimistic about Population Health? Why?
We look forward to the conversation…and hope to see you in Philadelphia!
Guest host biographies:
David B. Nash, MD, MBA, @NashPopHealth is the Founding Dean Emeritus and the Dr. Raymond C. and Doris N. Grandon Professor of Health Policy at the Jefferson College of Population Health (@JeffersonJCPH). His tenure as Dean completes nearly 30 years on the University faculty. Nash was recently appointed Special Assistant to Bruce Meyer, MD, MBA, President of Jefferson Health.
Dr. Skoufalos is Associate Dean for Strategic Development and Executive Director of the Center for Population Health Innovation at the Jefferson College of Population Health, where she is responsible for facilitating external partnerships and collaborative initiatives. She is also Associate Editor for American Journal of Medical Quality and serves on the editorial board of Population Health Management.
Fred Goldstein, MS, (@fsgoldstein)is President of Accountable Health LLC and lead co-host of PopHealth Week on HealthcareNOW Radio. Fred is also a co-host at Health Innovation Media PopUpStudio.productions
Gregg Masters, MPH, (@2healthguru) is Managing Director of Health Innovation Media’s PopUpStudio.productions and the producer and co-host of PopHealth Week on HealthcareNOW Radio.
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