Many providers putting population health tools to use

The population health management market sustains to move toward maturity, in accordance to Bradley Hunter, research director at KLAS Enterprises, in a latest report. Previous year, the industry shifted from trying population health management tools and population health tools to using them in improving care practices, he points out. The percentage of providers predicting financial risk for the care of sufferers remained very small overall across the nation, but that percentage of providers entering these agreements sustains to grow.

Subsequently, in describing the advances of population health in the year of 2016, “The training wheels are off,” Hunter claims.

Although, providers interviewed for the report told Hunter and other researchers that a big challenge remains—getting physicians and other clinicians to use population health tools. As in the past, providers faced with any change in technology mostly do not need to use it, and getting them to adopt latest tools is complex.

Although, few physicians are coming around to the promise of population health, specifically when population health tools are integrated with an electronic health records (EHRs) system, which, when merged with insurance information, enables clinicians to see potential benefits from using population health management tools. That sustains a minority of clinicians for now, Hunter claims. Most have to be brought along over time and to them, these are merely more tools they are being compelled to use.

Even clinicians who’re ready for population health tools might find themselves waiting on their electronic health records (EHRs) vendor to be capable to accept population health data in the EHR. Just a handful of huge vendors and best-of-breed companies are capable of integrating data at this time period. Furthermore, each version of an EHR vendor’s product has differences that will make integration of outside applications more complicated.

With providers getting prepared for value-based care, KLAS rated pop health vendors for product readiness; in preparing the report, Hunter and coworkers also questioned providers on the capabilities of their technology partners. Vendors ENLI and i2i led in ease of information aggregation. Athenahealth, Optum and Wellcentive acquired good marks for merging claims and clinical information. The report offers ENLI, Cerner and Wellcentive good marks for overall flexibility and being capable to rapidly adapt to latest requirements.

More in-depth Information about the report, “Population Health Management 2016,” can be found here.