What does the future hold?
In a series of article on Population Health this week in Medical Economics (click on image below) the authors discuss a number of recent developments in medical practice that we’ve been actively involved in at His Branches Health Services over the past few years. One of the primary questions is, how will these changes be affected by the recent shift in power in Washington, DC?
What is “population health”? By definition it is “the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group,” and in a primary medical care practice like ours it is an organized approach to health care that aims to improve the health not only of individual patients but of all of the patients in our clinic practice and surrounding community.
The excerpt below (click here for full article) suggests that the future of population health is well-established and here to stay.
David Nash, MD, MBA, and dean of Jefferson College of Population Health at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, told Medical Economics that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has shifted the healthcare cost structure, increased the demand for greater accountability and requires primary care physicians to focus on groups of chronically ill patients that cost more to the healthcare system.
“The horse is so far out of the barn you can’t see its tail,” Nash said. “The most important issue in healthcare is how we reduce costs in the system, and the move to value-based care is inexorable.”
