Six Steps to Success with Population Health

Shared accountability agreements create significant financial incentives for providers who capitalize on them. Doing so requires population health management initiatives that systematically improve clinical outcomes while reducing costs.

Collecting and analyzing data play a crucial role in population health management. With big-picture insight into patient populations and utilization trends, you can focus your care managers on the right patient interventions and seamlessly transition to accountable care—without disrupting clinical workflows.

Here are six actionable steps you can follow to create an effective population health management program.

1. Aggregate your data. The first step toward achieving success in an accountable care environment is capitalizing on a solution that will aggregate all of your clinical and claims data so you can identify areas of opportunity. The data helps you understand how you’ve performed historically so you can focus on the areas where you are ready to take on risk rather than entering into contracts blindly.
2. Analyze your data. Static reports and raw data by itself do little to enable clinical and cost improvements. Advanced, self-service data analytics give you the capabilities you need to easily design and measure population health initiatives.
3. Communicate with patients. Once you’ve identified disease management opportunities and intervention initiatives, you can proactively communicate to those at-risk patient populations. Involving patients in their own care goes a long way toward improving patient engagement.
4. Engage clinicians. To drive clinical improvement, it’s important to get physician buy-in and align physicians around the organization’s population health strategies and metrics. The key is to show physicians the facts, utilizing evidence-based practices.
5. Measure success. Monitor your organization’s performance on your P4P and HEDIS quality measures in near real-time. This ensures that you will be able to focus on areas of improvement throughout the year prior to reporting your results.
6. Start at home. Integrated delivery networks have practiced the concepts behind population health management long before the advent of accountable care. Follow their lead and start your population health initiatives with your self-insured populations.

To get started, learn more about MedeAnalytics Population Health or email us.