How To Choose The Right PHM Vendor

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

A report from Impact Advisors helps you assess the right vendor for your organization.

An Impact Advisors report provides useful guidelines for choosing the right population health management vendor for your healthcare organization. Currently, there are over 100 PHM vendors with no clear vendor/product market leader emerging. “Most population health management vendors have strengths either on the analytics side or on the care management side,” writes Impact Advisors. “Few do both well an even fewer have a multitude of satisfied clients.”

The white paper, Selecting a Population Management Vendor: Taming the Wave, examines the steps that healthcare organizations can take to assess the vendors that best meet their needs when it comes to Population Health Management.

Tonya Edwards, MD, principal-physician advisors at Impact Advisors, laid out eight steps to selecting the appropriate vendor according to For The Record. They include:

• Identify key stakeholders and assembly a vendor evaluation team.
• Develop an understanding of key population health requirements in terms of EHRs, Data Management/ Exchange, Registries, Care Management Tools, Patient Engagement Tools, Clinical Decision Support, Analytics, and Reporting.
• Develop an organizational specific population health management definition. “Developing your own definition of population health management is the first step in establishing an organizational vision for population health,” the study asserts.
• Develop a strategic vision of population health management in your organization.
• Evaluation the current state of your organization to determine what functionality your organization currently has in place.
• Perform a gap analysis to identify the functionalities that need focus when evaluating PHM vendors.
• Develop a vendor scorecard based on the vendors’ ability to perform each functional area identified, and prioritize/weigh the scoring based on organizational needs.
• Evaluate four to six vendors, ultimately narrowing down the field to one or two that best fit your organization’s needs, with final decision based on cost and time to value.

Ultimately, the study concludes, while the selection of a PHM solution can be a daunting task, if healthcare organizations take time to educate themselves about population health tools, define the specific needs of their organizations, and make use of independent research, the process can be simplified to achieve a positive outcome. By using an organized and objective approach to evaluating a short list of vendors, healthcare providers can avoid potential pitfalls and select the most appropriate vendor for their needs.