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Population Health Management: The Convergence of Public Health, Health Care, and Health Administration
Population health is one of the top buzzwords in healthcare administration at the moment. Yet it remains entirely unclear as to what differentiates public health from population health and population health management from healthcare management from health administration.
Some definitional clarity is required in order to establish relationships and possibilities are between the worlds of healthcare administration and public health administration. With the Affordable Care Act, the creation of Accountable Care Organizations and Patient Centered Medical Homes, and changes in reimbursement by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services, the domains of public health and healthcare delivery are going to be increasingly overlapping to a point where the two fields may become almost indistinguishable. Traditional acute care medicine and core public health functions are unlikely to ever fully integrate, but many public health strategies, frameworks and institutions are likely to become increasingly incorporated into health care delivery.
This incorporation is what true population health management requires. It will also require bringing together a wide range of disciplines including healthcare quality, healthcare finance, health IT, public and community health and others to achieve the goals of improving the health of populations effected by health systems. Due to the novelty, the rapidly emerging nature, and the interdisciplinarity of population health management, the time has come to re-think traditional silos that have existed between public health, health care delivery, and health administration and to explore how best to leverage each of these respective domains to collectively improve the health of populations.
Learning Areas:
Administration, management, leadershipPublic health administration or related administration
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health
Learning Objectives:
Define competing definitions of population health management in health care and health administration
Describe how population health management is a convergence of public health, health care, and health administration.
Discuss how population health management will require breaking down traditional silos between public health and health care
Keyword(s): Public Health Administration, Health Care Delivery
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the program director for the MS in Healthcare Administration program at the University of New Haven where I teach population health management. I also have a PhD in Bioethics and Health Policy from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.