How to Choose the Right Population Health Management Tool 

As the healthcare industry shifts to value-based care, population health management tools are essential for organizations to manage costs and improve outcomes.

A successful transformation to this new model requires a comprehensive PHM solution that can aggregate claims and clinical and SDoH data from multiple sources to deliver actionable insights into cost drivers and quality measures for performance-based reimbursements.

Understand Your Needs

While there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of which population health management tools are best, some key considerations can help you make the right choice.

First, you need to understand your needs. Ask yourself how the tool will improve your ability to provide better care for patients. This will include both reducing costs and improving clinical outcomes.

For example, if you are looking to reduce your readmission rates, use a tool that tracks trends in patient comorbidities and allows you to identify those that need more attention. You can also try a tool that lets you customize patient care plans and offers automated outreach services.

In addition to collecting and analyzing data, you need a tool that makes it easy to use your collected information. You can find this in various tools, from basic data-collection apps to more complex enterprise-level software.

Using a risk-assessment tool can help you identify patients with high risk for poor health outcomes, like those who are older, have more chronic diseases, or have a history of hospitalizations. Then, you can provide them with more targeted support and a higher level of attention to prevent disease and maintain good health.

Determine Your Budget

Choosing the right population health management tool is vital to your organization’s success. It can help your organization improve patient outcomes, lower costs, and engage patients and caregivers. However, choosing the tool that best fits your needs and budget is also important.

Selecting the right tool requires understanding your organization’s goals and the types of data you need to collect. The tool should also be easy to use and offer features that will help you get the most out of your data.

When selecting a tool, include input from your leadership team. This will ensure that the tools you implement meet your organization’s mission and user needs and help you determine whether or not the project makes financial sense for your organization.

A well-designed population health tool can also save your healthcare organization money in the long run. It can help you reduce unnecessary spending by identifying gaps in care and addressing them before they turn into acute events. It will also help you track trends and improve the quality of your data over time, which will ultimately help you improve your organization’s patient outcomes.

Look for Integrations

When choosing a population health management tool, one of the most important things to consider is whether the software will be integrated with other systems. Ideally, this will help you make sense of your data and produce actionable insights to improve patient care and reduce costs.

Several popular population health tools include integrated business intelligence (BI) tools that combine labs, billing, claims, EHR, and pharmacy information in a single long-view record. This gives providers a comprehensive portrait of the patient, making it easy to identify gaps in care and close them quickly.

Additionally, many population health tools are designed to be easily accessible by clinicians and non-clinical staff. This helps to ensure that they will be used regularly and effectively throughout a healthcare organization.

Before implementing a new population health management tool, it is vital to have a clear vision and goals for how the new technology will benefit the entire organization. This helps to clarify the functionality that will be necessary and also helps to determine if the new tool is a good fit for your budget.

Once you have a clear understanding of the tools needed for your population health initiative, you can begin to look for integrations with other systems to get the most out of the software. This includes finding out if the tool can track patient outcomes, share data with other organizations or even allow for integrations with community health information exchanges.

Test the Tool

Choosing the right population health management tool is important in getting your organization up and running. It should support your goals, be robust enough to meet your budget, and meet the needs of your staff.

A key part of this process is testing the tool. By putting it through its paces, you can ensure that the tool can do what it is supposed to do and that your users will find it easy to use.

One way to test a tool is to use it with real patients in your practice. This can be done by using a patient portal or a patient engagement system that allows you to send them information about their condition or symptoms and to communicate with the provider or the rest of your team if they have questions or concerns.

Another way to test a tool is to run a small survey that asks about the specific population you are targeting. This will help you understand how your data is being used and whether or not it is providing the results you need.

A good tool should be able to integrate with your current EHR and any other systems you may have in place. This includes claims, clinical data, patient demographics, and behavior patterns.

A good tool that integrates with your existing EHR is the first step to success with a population health initiative. Once you have a platform that can manage all your data and is easy to use, you should start using it with your patients.