Yet the term population health can have both clinical and public health meanings. Population health is a relatively new concept: before 1990, Medline contains fewer than ten articles per year with “population health” in the title or abstract (Fig. 6 Yet of more than $3 trillion the USA spends annually on health, 95% goes to healthcare and only 5% for public health promotion and disease prevention. 5 An oft-cited report by the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute demonstrated that clinical care accounts for only 20% of health-related outcomes (length of life × quality of life) compared to 40% by social and economic factors, 30% by health behaviors, and 10% by the physical environment. The goal is the “triple aim” (improving patients’ healthcare experiences and population health while reducing costs and improving population health) by moving upstream from sick care to focus on and ameliorate the clinical, social, behavioral, economic, and structural antecedents of chronic diseases. Consequently, the US has mediocre health outcomes yet the world’s highest costs 1 that has driven payers, employers, and governmental agencies to seek substantial changes that incentivize value-based care. To date, US healthcare has predominantly been mainly “sickness care,” focused on fixing what is broken, funded via fee for service that incentivizes utilization. More recently, many medical schools have added healthcare delivery science, giving emphasis to healthcare systems and physicians’ role in ensuring healthcare’s effectiveness and efficiency. High-quality care was defined as making an accurate diagnosis, prescribing the best treatment, and preventing specific diseases for patients at risk. Until the past decade or so, medical education in the US focused on developing medical students’ skills in diagnosing and treating acute and chronic conditions in individual patients. Engaging relevant academic and community stakeholders is an effective model for developing this emerging discipline in US medical schools. Medical schools should have a primary focus in population, most effectively at the departmental level. The resulting departmental strategic plan included scope of work, desired characteristics of leaders, and early impact activities in seven areas of interest: community engagement and health equity, primary care and value-based health, occupational and environment medicine, medical education, health services and community-based research, health informatics and data analysis, and global health. Approachįocus groups with subsequent consensus development of emphases identified premeeting by participants by e-mail exchanges. ParticipantsĮighty-one persons representing the Dell Medical School and other schools at the University of Texas at Austin, city/county government, community nonprofit organizations, and faculty from other local university schools along with selected national academic leaders. Designįocus groups with facilitated consensus development. To seek broad input for the strategic development of the Department of Population Health in a new medical school at a tier 1 research university. Hence, the term “population health” has both clinical and community-based connotations relevant to the tripartite mission of US medical schools. Simultaneously, there is increasing interest in getting “upstream” from disease management to promote health and prevent disease. The focus and funding of US healthcare is evolving from volume to value-based, and healthcare leaders, managers, payers, and researchers are increasingly focusing on managing populations of patients.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |