Unlock PHM's Full Potential
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
Transitioning to value-based care can be difficult, but there are many success stories that can serve as a guide to providers wanting make the leap.
One of the benefits of population health management (PHM) is utilizing technology to target certain at-risk groups and intervene with appropriate care before conditions worsen. This only works if patients are willing to change their habits, however, and tackling care both inside and outside the hospital is a challenge.
Patient engagement is often the biggest challenge for successful use of PHM. Christine Steigerwald, Senior Director of HIMS Operations at Banner Health told Health IT Analytics, “We were fortunate that we were allowed to hire about twelve health information management (HIM) professionals to make rounds to the patients in their rooms and show them how to log into and navigate the portal. That’s been very successful in helping us meet the Meaningful Use initiative right now.
“Some patients are hard to persuade, so we got very creative with bringing them into a small office, offering them the opportunity to get a $10.00 gas card if they would spend the time with us. We’ve actually set a target of 10 percent or more rather than just trying to get to five percent.”
Becker’s Hospital Review offers four more tips for successfully incorporating a PHM strategy:
- Use data effectively to drive continuous improvement
Use data in a way that identifies shortcomings and successes. After identifying key issues and challenges, hospitals should then invest in continuous improvement strategies. - Adopt a broader perspective
Take steps, for instance, to ensure care transitions are seamless from the hospital to post-acute care settings. Think about what happens after patients leave the walls of the hospital. - Develop a hospitalist program
Hospitalists can help make decisions about how best to care for patients and create a post-hospitalization plan, saving money and improving patient health. - Choose the right partners
In order to effectively manage the health of a patient population, hospitals need to be part of a larger, integrated healthcare organization. They should be able to collaborate to share information and data to drive improvement, as well as agree on common tools and a common vernacular to ensure performance measurement is consistent across teams.
For providers interested in more guidance when it comes to taking on PHM, Allscripts is offering a webinar Wednesday, November 12 at 1 p.m. ET featuring David B. Nash, the Founding Dean of the Jefferson School of Population Health. The webinar, The Key to Population Health Management: A Healthy Core, will focus on:
- the latest industry data on population health initiatives
- components of a Healthy Core to drive your own success in value-based care
- real-world success stories of others that have built a Healthy Core