We believe that the primary task of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) is to improve patient and population health outcomes. Commissioning leaders will always be seeking innovative tools and methodologies of improving the health and wellness of the populations they serve.
Clinical commissioners are increasingly focused on the triple aim of 1) reducing health costs; 2) improving population health, and 3) improving the care experience.
In order for them to deliver on this triple aim CCGs need a precise understanding of how the local health system is performing. A question on every clinical commissioner’s lips is – or should be – “How healthy is our health system?”
An increasing number of healthcare commissioners – and a growing number of providers – are beginning to recognise the value and benefits that population health management strategies can bring when trying to understand, and indeed optimise, health system performance.
At Sollis, we and our academic partners are firmly of a view that only when you apply case–mix adjusted methodologies to a population based analysis, do you truly provide insights into health system performance.
All population health management strategies rely on high quality data. Actionable intelligence that health and care organisations make better decisions for the patient and citizens they serve.
If you can crunch the right data and run the appropriate analytics then you can provide commissioners and providers alike with invaluable insights into whether local populations are getting healthier or not. Gold standard population health analytics should be able to identify multi–morbidities (because multi–morbidity is now the norm) and then shine a light on those patient cohorts that could benefit from targeted interventions.
If you apply case–mix and costing methodologies to a large population base then you can predict healthcare needs and costs. You can then then follow those populations over time and consider actual costs as compared to predicted costs.
What we are talking about here are tools and techniques that explain and predict how health care resources are delivered and consumed.
The tools and techniques that shine light on the ‘triple aim’ are not the stuff of science fiction.
They lie within our grasp now.
