POPULATION HEALTH: ONE PATIENT
AT A TIME
Tom James, MD
E
very few years there seems to be a new
buzzword in health care. We have seen
HMOs, PPO, IPAs, Medical Home and
Accountable Care Organizations all written
about extensively. Now Population Health is
being touted. Physicians can become jaded
with the terminologies and the phrases. Some
physicians find no change with the march of
each new term as it hits the health care landscape. But, over time, we have all felt the impact. Surely, each of the
new movements has brought about changes to the doctor-patient
relationship and to reimbursement for services even as they have
allowed more citizens access to medical care services.
So what is Population Health as it is being used today, and what
can we expect to be the result of this new movement in health
care? Physicians are used to the practice of medicine as it applies
to individual patients while thinking about public health being
government-run programs to ensure safety in restaurants, mass
immunizations and sanitation programs. But Population Health as a
term is more recent. It wasn’t until 2003 that the term was first used
in public health literature. Drs. Greg Stottart and David Kindig first
proposed the term, defining it as “The aggregate health outcome of
health-adjusted life expectancy (quantity and quality) of a group of
individuals, in an economic framework that balances the relative
marginal returns from the multiple determinants of health.” (Am
J Public Health. 2003 March; 93(3): 380–383)
This definition has an academic ring to it, so the application of
this definition \