Digging into the Analytics Behind Population Health Management

^{Courtesy of World Health Care Congress.}

Building a strong population health management program can improve quality of care, reduce costs and foster value-based care. But a successful population health initiative requires more than desire from health system executives. This is a technological feat that demands buy-in — and plenty of patient data and advanced analytics.

As healthcare moves from legacy technologies and the fee-for-service model, every health system will need to have its hand in population health. Aggregating data and enabling care delivery across a given group of patients won’t be a privilege reserved for those in the ivory tower. But leading healthcare innovators have been running population health management programs in their own organizations for some time, and the rest of the industry will be smart to learn from them.

That’s why my colleague Tom Castles and I teamed up with World Health Care Congress 2019 (WHCC19) to co-chair the conference’s Population Health Analytics track on Monday, April 29 in Washington, D.C. It’s not enough to discuss theories and concepts — we need to learn from experts who entered the trenches and came out successful. Healthcare needs their insights and use cases, their wins and losses. And that’s what this track promises to deliver.

The sessions cover agile implementation and developing a population health roadmap, how payers are adapting to artificial intelligence and more.

Analytics for Better Population Health

Consider the panel discussion, “Apply ‘Blue-Collar’ Advanced Analytics to Improve the Value of Healthcare Now.” Tom and I will co-moderate this conversation, in hopes of spotlighting how health systems are using machine learning to identify patterns in their data. Healthcare executives will walk away with a better understanding of how to refine care pathways and reduce clinical variation, in part by elevating underperforming physicians. We’re also going to touch on predicting high-cost patients, personalizing care and lowering risk through better, tailored patient engagement strategies.

So, in short, we’ll be discussing the kind of innovation that really can reduce costs and improve care quality.

The Right Population Health Experts

But equally important is who will be doing the talking — and the WHCC19 team has assembled an all-star panel for this session.

The lineup includes Betsy McVay, vice president and chief analytics officer for UnityPoint Health in Iowa, where she focuses on descriptive and predictive analytics to enhance care and efficiencies, earning the network performance measures in the top decile.

Michael C. Sanders, M.D., is vice president and chief medical informatics officer for Florida’s Flagler Hospital. He and his staff have centered their attention on reducing clinical variation through the use of artificial intelligence.

Finally, Andrew Sorenson, senior analytics director at Intermountain Healthcare, works on everything from corporate decision support and operational data science to population health analytics and strategic analytics functions.

Promoting Healthcare Innovation

We’re humbled to have the opportunity to share a stage with these healthcare innovators. They’re the reason why we know that this session — and the entire WHCC19 Population Health Analytics track — will provide real value to healthcare executives. It’s these expert voices that made us so excited to brave yet another Amtrak trip and tie our names to this event.

And it’s this kind of discussion that could cut through the hype and deliver actionable insights to healthcare leaders. If we do that a bit more often, who knows what could happen? We might just end up transforming healthcare.

World Health Care Congress 2019 will bring more than 1,500 attendees and 300 speakers to the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington D.C., from April 28 to May 1. Find more information on WHCC19 here.

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