A Roadmap for Population Health:  Best Practices for Achieving Operational Alignment

Larry Yuhasz, National Practice Leader, Truven Health Analytics, shares insights gleaned from 3,000 hospital clients about managing the transition from fee-for-service to risk-based reimbursement models and population health approaches. Hospital systems live in a hybrid world where FFS demands attention to volume and efficiency, while at-risk models push for value and effectiveness.  The approaches identified for finding the balance between the two varied based on strategic readiness for ACO and shared savings arrangements, maturity of clinical integration, and key network and competitive dynamics at the local level. Best practices for alignment tend to cluster around four key operational domains:  HIT, Analytics, Workflow and Physician Engagement.  Included topics are: determining priorities for C-Suite, physician and care management, balancing population health models with the operational realities, moving from the creation of a single patient record, to population health analytics, to care management, shifting investment priorities from data capture to coordinated decision support, assessing alignment in clinical integration, analytic readiness, clinical workflow and physician engagement, and best practices.