Population Health Management and Clinical Integration
Monday, June 13th, 2016
Population Health Management and Clinical Integration – The Center of the Reformed Health Care System
Population health management is bigger than ever now that health reform has become ingrained in our health care system. The concept of population health management is not necessarily new. Related concepts emerged in the 1990s when capitated reimbursement gained some converts. It was known then that in order to succeed under fixed levels of total compensation required systems to be developed to make people healthier while at the same time managing cost and resource utilization. When a network took on capitation, it knew that it had to look at its patients as a population. This was a change from the fee-for- service mindset that was previously and subsequently predominant in the health care system. I think it is fair to say that there were very few organizations that successfully applied population management standards under alternative payment systems in the 1990s. We very quickly saw capitation fall into the background because, with a few exceptions, the system just did not have it figured out yet how to view and manage population health.
Population health management has come a long way since those early efforts in the 1990s. The concept is again front stage, but this time organizations have a head start building on what was learned in the past. Technology and data analysis has become much more sophisticated and commonplace. Technology is a necessary component of managing a population health and quality. Evidence based medicine supports population management by collecting and applying baseline data, comparing data to other baselines, helping to structure evidence based care protocols based on current medical outcomes studies, and the ability to measure the success of an applied process or protocol. This move toward technological support of population management was behind the move to virtually mandate electronic health records through legislation and regulations. This technological infrastructure now serves as the backbone to permit data to be extracted in support of evidence-based population health management.
Population management is being embraced by forward looking organizations that have a vision of the future. It can be quite an adjustment to make the changes that are necessary to indicate success under a population management system. The old system rewarded providing more services that were reimbursed on a fee for service basis. The old fee-for-service model is changing rapidly. Overall population quality, outcomes and cost efficiency are now taking front seat. Some providers who did very well under the old system can have difficulty adjusting their practice patterns to adjust to the new regimen. More service led to more revenues under the old system. Under population management, more is not always better. Concepts of “more” are being replaced by concepts of “appropriate.” Appropriate levels of service performed in appropriate service locations, by appropriate providers.
Hospitals, health care system, physician groups and others are finding it necessary to adapt to a new world in which providers are rewarded for meeting quality objectives for their entire patient population. Where volume used to be king, efficiency and quality have now taken over the health care kingdom.
Our health care practice is normally a great indicator of trends in the industry. In the 90’s we did a lot of provider integration work. This work has now come full circle and is again a major part of our health care practice. Our health law practice is involved creating clinically integrated organizations that are equipped to manage population health on several fronts. This is an exciting process for our health law team as we are on the cutting edge of the hottest issues in health care. We are creating new health care systems that include new collaborative relationships between providers. We are applying these concepts in unique and creative ways. This creative process results in a very exciting legal practice.
We will be posting a series on clinical integration in which we share some f our experience applying population management and evidence-based evidence standards to a number of specific types of organizations. We will touch on some of the legal, business and operational challenges that we have encountered.
Grab our rss feed and come along for the journey as we cover “clinical integration in the new millennium.”
