In contrast to one-on-one patient-provider interaction, population health management (PHM) elevates the view to the “30,000 foot level” – encompassing the condition of entire groups of individuals that comprise a given population.
While U.S. healthcare is widely recognized as the most advanced, technologically sophisticated in the world in terms of clinical capabilities, the population-wide metrics do not portray a uniformly positive picture. Issues of access, equity, and affordability underlie the persistently poor outcomes that are experienced by many cohorts of individuals.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic laid out, in perhaps some of the starkest terms to date, the disproportionately negative out- comes experienced by marginalized groups along lines of race and ethnicity, geographic location, educational and economic status, and other social determinants of health
(SDoH).
Not only are there significant disparities in the adequacy and quality of care, chronic illness prevalence – much of it preventable and stemming from lifestyle – represents a significant percentage of healthcare consumption and cost. Care that could and should be delivered in community health centers, for example, instead gets rendered in less appropriate, more expensive settings like emergency rooms. Until the system makes strides in addressing these issues, our healthcare system will not realize its full potential.
The BettrAi platform not only allows the healthcare system to identify risk and even offer statistical projections of likely events, it equips care managers within health systems and individual practices to be proactive about interceding before adverse outcomes are experienced. A combination of preventive care ser- vices, rapid response to impending complications that jeopardize recovery and stabilization, and tightly coordinated care that efficiently merges evidence-based interventions across multi-disciplinary teams serves to improve health, population-wide.
When clinicians, community resources, caregivers, and patients are engaged and their efforts are coordinated; when financial and behavioral incentives are aligned in concert with the achievement of positive outcomes; when the clinical, financial, and operational data that feeds sound decision-making is readily available in a form that instills accountability, population health management becomes a realistic, attainable goal.