Population Health Management: Strategies to Improve Outcomes

Population health management strategies can help an organization more effectively manage a defined population of individuals by optimizing care delivery and resource allocation. Ideally, these strategies enable healthcare organizations to both improve the quality of care and lower the cost of providing healthcare services to their patients. This book provides an overview of five different population health management strategies, along with examples of how each strategy can be implemented. These strategies -- lifestyle management, demand management, disease management, catastrophic care management, and disability management -- address the health and care management needs of individuals from the healthy to the catastrophically ill. The importance of integration and of synthesizing different strategies in population health management is also described.

Ann Scheck McAlearney, Sc.D., is an assistant professor of Health Services Management and Policy at the Ohio State University