Population health management

In order to address their future sustainability, care systems – that are currently focused on improving the patient experience of care – need to also focus on improving the health of populations and being a good steward of the per capita cost of care – this is the IHI Triple Aim for healthcare.

Population health management is about taking responsibility for managing the overall health and wellbeing of a defined population and being accountable for the health outcomes of that community. The goal of population health is to improve the quality of care and outcomes whilst managing costs for a defined group of people. Population health should be viewed as part of a wider health and wellbeing strategy that includes wider determinants of health, such as housing, the environment and employment.

Informatics has a fundamental role to play. Cerner is leading the world in its vision and execution through our investments in developing a new population health management platform, called HealtheIntent^®. Layered over any existing information systems in a care network, in near real-time it normalises data into single source of truth population records for a patient, and provides the new tools that are required to manage the health and wellbeing of the population. Care gaps, surveillance alerts or actions to drive evidence-based programmes of care are provided directly back into clinicians’ own information systems.