What is population health and why should it matter to you?

My introduction to population health

Several years ago I received a blast email solicitation with the subject line “Population Health Manager Position”. Usually, I would send these emails straight to the junk folder, but this time I didn’t. I couldn’t recall seeing the phrase “Population Health” and this triggered my curiosity. As I read the description of the job, this company was looking for someone to oversee a team of individuals tasked with improving clinical outcomes for a defined group of patients. Who was this group of patients? What were the clinical outcomes? How were they measuring improvement?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states population health “brings significant health concerns into focus and addresses ways that resources can be allocated to overcome the problems that drive poor health conditions in the population.” The CDC differentiates population health from public health as “an opportunity for health care systems, agencies and organizations to work together in order to improve the health outcomes of the communities they serve.” Many other organizations use some variation of a definition for population health as focusing on the health outcomes of a group of individuals measured by health status indicators.

Why population health parameters matter

My experience with population health resides primarily within health care systems, insurance companies, and research. I am challenged with understanding how a client or collaborator defines population health, establishing the group of patients, identifying which health status indicators are being measured, and distinguishing what is considered “improvement”. For example, a health care system client may want CHS to focus on Medicare patients with a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes AND a hemoglobin A1c > 9%. Improvement is achieved when a patient’s A1c is <9%. It's only once these parameters are clearly defined that I can design and implement a strategy to achieve the desired goals. No cookie-cutter approaches here.