The population health management market is set to pace up as the healthcare industry witnesses a shift to a value based reimbursement system due to the introduction of healthcare and legislative reforms such as the Affordable Care Act (2010) in the U.S. and rising healthcare expenditure across the globe. For instance, the U.S. healthcare expenditure was $2.7 trillion in 2011, accounting for 17.6% of GDP. As per Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), this expenditure will reach $4.8 trillion by 2020 and will continue to grow in the future. Thus, rising pressure to curtail healthcare costs and meet the demands for quality care is driving the adoption of healthcare analytics and population health management solutions market.
Population health management (PHM) programs play an important role in providing better healthcare to the population, while simultaneously reducing the costs. It improves the health of the population through the coordination of efforts by individuals, organizations, and providers. According to the prominent players in this market like WellCentive, Inc., Phytel, Inc., Health Catalyst LLC, McKesson Corporation, among others, the adoption of population health management solutions is likely to rise among the Employer Groups.
Employer groups are the untapped and potential end-users who stand to gain a lot from PHM programs. Of late, the companies are emphasizing on providing such solutions to the Employer Group. Healthagen, LLC is one of the vendors of population health management solutions to the Employer Groups. The Boulder County is one such group who adopted the solution to enhance its employees’ health. The county has made optimum use of population health programs to improve the health of its employees and reduce their healthcare costs. It has been encouraging its employees to participate in PHM programs focusing on health and wellness since over a decade.
As a result of the PHM program it was observed over a period of four years between 2006 and 2010 that improvements were made in each of the top 5 disease risk categories with the percentage of employees at risk to cancer and low nutrition dropping significantly by 20% and 14% respectively.
It was also found that repeat participants in the PHM program for the years 2008 and 2009 had lower healthcare costs compared to non-participants in the same time period. In 2008 the healthcare costs for repeat participants was $934 less than that of non-participants whereas in 2009 the difference was $ 782.
Thus it can be seen that the adoption of PHM programs can help effectively manage the health of the population as well as reduce the healthcare costs, one such perfect example being Boulder County in Colorado, U.S. Keeping in view these benefits of PHM programs it is expected that the adoption of PHM programs is going to grow rapidly across the globe thus providing ample opportunities to all the stakeholders involved.
