Do Contributors Apply Population Health Management Inconsistently?

A deficiency of industry-wide guidelines for population health management may be launching inconsistencies into the process of selecting patients for care management.

There is important variation in the way individual practices select high-risk patients for participation in care management and population health management programs, in accordance to a new study published in the American Journal of Managed Care, although most providers do tend to target the older, sicker, and more socioeconomically complex members of their attributed patient pools.

The study reviewed more than 2600 Medicare beneficiaries receiving care within 35 practices of Partners HealthCare, a large Pioneer Accountable Care Organization (ACO) in the Boston area.

The researchers hypothesized that even though the practitioners within the ACO are incentivized to give comprehensive population health management and chronic disease care services to meet quality objectives and make better the outcomes, there may be significant variation in the way patients are identified and chosen to enroll in care management services.