A crucial component of healthcare reform is to transform our care delivery system to improve quality and control costs. To do that, the government is working with the private sector to test and promote new structures such as the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) and the accountable care organization (ACO). Both of these innovations, which will gain momentum in 2011, require providers to make sure that everyone in their patient population is receiving appropriate preventive and chronic-disease care.
Today, many physician practices and hospitals still operate in the traditional fee-for-service model. To build a successful medical home or ACO, however, providers will have to coordinate care and work with patients to improve their health between as well as during office visits. They will also have to track and monitor their patients’ health status, and reach out to those patients who are noncompliant or have fallen out of touch with their physicians. In essence, they will be required to adopt a population health management approach and strategy. And more importantly, they will need automated capabilities in order to support these initiatives.
Even with financial support from payers, physician practices cannot do this type of population health management without the aid of health information technology. Beyond electronic health records, they will need registries, multi-channel patient messaging technologies, and web-based tools for health risk assessments and patient self-management education. Using registry-generated data to identify care gaps, physicians will be better able to deliver necessary services to patients when they visit, matching care team skill sets to patient-specific needs. Similarly, care managers will use advanced population-based reporting and stratification to identify patients who need personalized interventions, and deliver automated methods to empower patients to become active participants in their own health.
In the next year, we’ll see the spread of these automation and care coordination tools as alternative care delivery models take root and grow. While experts say it will take some time before population health management becomes the norm, many healthcare leaders are already jumping on the bandwagon to take advantage of the incentives that Medicare and private insurers are offering.
Learn More
Find out about current news and events at Phytel.