Healthcare facilities all aim to provide the best outcomes for their patients. These outcomes can be made even better when these healthcare systems align their focus on improvement with population health management (PHM) strategies. 

Because PHM strategies cover the comprehensive picture of individual health and population health, which includes health behaviors, social and economic factors, and the environment, facilities can ensure that their initiatives completely influence care delivery for all. Below are four population health management strategies facilities can use to improve their patient outcomes.

Data transformation

Healthcare depends on data to make the population health journey more transparent. This means that facilities must be able to integrate a large amount of internal and external data sources that make data collection and analyzation easier. Making the patient journey more transparent allows facilities to better manage their networks, opportunities, and risks to improve their care. This can’t just include clinical data; data about social and economic information, health behaviors, the environment, costs, and more must also be present as well. All of this data makes sure that proper care is being provided in the right place and at the right time.

Analytic transformation

Once facilities have the data, they’ll also need to create an analytic structure that delivers a number of advantages, including:

  • The ability to understand the baseline of a target population
  • The ability to process the definition of a population and target the right patients who could benefit from a specific intervention
  • The ability to predict opportunities for improvement based in variations of care
  • The ability to understand costs as they apply to individual settings versus the entire care continuum 
  • The ability to continue analysis to ensure that initiatives are impacting the appropriate avenues 

Payment transformation

Facilities must consider their fee-for-service payment models to understand the comprehensive cost of care and the nuances brought on under value-based care and population health. If healthcare organizations transition to a value-based care model but can’t support that switch with the current payment model, there will be no improvement. 

Care transformation

Organizations should be optimizing their care management processes and outcomes to support each patient that they could interact with. Part of this care transformation could include strengthening the infrastructure of primary care settings, improving the communication between patients and their caregivers, as well as making sure that the right care is given in the right setting at the right time. 

Every single one of these population health management strategies all work together to ensure the best outcomes for patients regardless of their unique circumstances or where they’re at in their care journey.