More than a decade ago, the idea of population health management as an alternative way of structuring how we pay for healthcare becameThe topic became all the rage–conferences, articles, books, and lots of enthusiastic internal meetings followed.
At present, payment to hospitals and physicians for care is unique. Usually, consumers don’t know how much their care will cost until after they receive the care, and there are no refunds, whether the care provided the intended improvement or not. The idea behind population health management isn’t really radical–in fact, it would make paying for healthcare much more like the way we pay for everything else in our lives.
Data from the most recent administration continues to show that executives across the country expect that population health will be the wave of the future, but change remains slow to come. For instance, the 2024 report found that most respondents said that population health would be ‘critically’ or ‘very’ important for future success, a finding consistent with years past. But they also made it clear that their organizations are still early in their journey toward a new model.
Some areas show promising progress, however. The fact that predictions respondents made two years ago about the amount of revenue that would currently flow through risk-based contracts was accurate is significant. This marks the first time that the predictions respondents made about where they would be two years ahead actually matched where they were two years later. In previous surveys, respondents’ organizations did not live up to the expectations they had set.