Population health
"[6][7] Healthy People 2020 is a web site sponsored by the US Department of Health and Human Services, representing the cumulative effort of 34 years of interest by the Surgeon General's office and others.
It provides links to the current research available for selected topics and identifies and supports the need for community involvement considered essential to address these problems realistically.
Most famous for linking social status with health are the Whitehall studies—a series of studies conducted on civil servants in London.
The studies found that this relationship stayed strong even when controlling for health-affecting habits such as exercise, smoking and drinking.
Furthermore, it has been noted that no amount of medical attention will help decrease the likelihood of someone getting type 1 diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis—yet both are more common among populations with lower socioeconomic status.
Across the 38 OECD countries, region, or equivalent large subnational entities, is the predominant geographic level for both mortality and morbidity indicators.
[11] There is ongoing debate as to the relative contributions of race, gender, poverty, education level and place to these variations.
[12][13] Family planning programs (including contraceptives, sexuality education, and promotion of safe sex) play a major role in population health.
[14] Family planning saves lives and money by reducing unintended pregnancy and the transmission of sexually transmitted infections.
[19] Many PHM-related articles are published in Population Health Management, the official journal of DMAA: The Care Continuum Alliance.
Prior to the introduction of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), hospitals were reimbursed based on the volume of procedures through fee-for-service models.
As participation in value-based reimbursement models such as accountable care organizations (ACOs) increases, these initiatives will help drive population health.
[24] Within the ACO model, hospitals have to meet specific quality benchmarks, focus on prevention, and carefully manage patients with chronic diseases.
[25] Studies have shown that inpatient admission rates have dropped over the past ten years in communities that were early adopters of the ACO model and implemented population health measures to treat "less sick" patients in the outpatient setting.
[27] Hospitals are finding it financially advantageous to focus on population health management and keeping people in the community well.
