Geographically-focused Population Health Strategy Delivers High-value Health Care
Population health management (PHM) continues to surface in the ongoing discussion of health care’s transition from volume to value — and for good reason. The PHM and volume-to-value strategies are closely tied because of their tremendous potential to transform health care across the United States. Geographically-focused PHM can push health care delivery progress to the next level and help other systems achieve the elusive Triple Aim of improved health, enhanced patient experience, and reduced costs among populations for whom they share risk.
In an article recently published in Population Health Management, we outlined how operating as an integrated delivery and finance system (IDFS) helped the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) pull all the necessary components of PHM together in one place. This strategy ultimately enabled UPMC to become the largest insurer in western Pennsylvania, providing health insurance products for more than 3.2 million members and 60,000 employers.
Our IDFS and geographically-focused PHM sparked innovation in western Pennsylvania, and this combination can help others across the nation also become high-value health care systems. They, too, can harness analytics to develop health care delivery approaches that effectively manage — and improve — population health in their respective regions.
We invite you to read our article in Population Health Management for more details.