Population health management, or PHM, is a business strategy that drives down costs and improves outcomes for employees. It helps you actively manage the health of your workforce, improve efficiency and productivity, and ultimately save money for your company. But what exactly is population health management? And how can it benefit you and your team? Find out below.

What Is Population Health Management?

Population health management, or PHM for short, is the practice of using data to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare organizations. It’s a methodology used to identify weaknesses in your care system and then fill those gaps so both patients and the practice can benefit. Most importantly, it’s a way to use information technology to improve:

• The overall health of people in a given population
• The quality of care they receive while they’re under treatment

Population health management solutions can also be used to reduce costs effectively.

Why Population Health Management?

Population health management can help you save money by reducing the number of sick leaves by employees. Data shows that poor worker health costs U.S. employers $575 billion annually. Population health management solutions allow companies to track their employees’ wellness and productivity by providing data on things like sleep cycles and stress levels. This allows companies to intervene when an employee’s well-being starts to decline, which can be a significant cost saving for your company.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that in 2019, 53.8% of adults aged 18-34 had at least one chronic condition, and 22.3% had more than one condition. PMH can be very beneficial to individuals with chronic illnesses who wish to continue working usually.

Population health management is also beneficial for team member retention as it provides greater insight into what makes certain employees happy or unhappy at work. Your team can use this information to identify root issues behind why an employee might be thinking about leaving so that you can address those concerns before they become severe enough that someone quits their job on bad terms with your company.

How Population Health Management Works

Population health management is a new approach to managing employee health and wellness. It’s not a silver bullet, but it can help you attract and retain top talent, reduce healthcare costs through improved team member well-being and enhance productivity and performance.

First, you have to acquire the data. This step involves gathering information from your employees’ medical records and surveying them on their health habits. You can also use this time to learn about your employer’s history with healthcare and previous efforts to improve team member wellness.

Next, you need to analyze the data you’ve collected. This is where you’ll look at how many people are sick, how long they’ve been sick, who they are, what their symptoms are like, and how long it took them to recover, if they recovered at all. Your analysis should also include information about what treatments were used and whether or not those treatments worked well enough for patients to get back on their feet within an acceptable timeframe.

Finally, once you’ve analyzed all this information, you can begin intervening where necessary by making changes in the work environment to better support your employees’ health needs. For example, a recent study found that mindfulness interventions by employers resulted in a desirable increase in sleep duration for shift workers.

Who Can Benefit From Population Health Management?

Several different stakeholders can benefit from population health management. Employers can use it to incentivize employees to make healthy choices and avoid preventable medical conditions.

Employees can use it to access information about how their lifestyles affect their long-term health and find out what kind of support they need to be healthier at work and at home.

Insurers can use population health management to better manage costs by targeting interventions that will help keep individuals healthy in the long run.

Healthcare providers may also benefit from population health management tools, like telehealth, because they allow patients with chronic conditions access to care outside of clinical settings, which helps reduce costs for everyone involved. According to a survey of physicians by the American Medical Association for the year 2021, more than 80% of respondents indicated that patients have better access to care since using telehealth.

Finally, governments may see an improvement in public health if the data collected helps them identify areas where resources should be focused or changes made.

How Population Health Management Transforms Your Team

Population health management solutions are essential for any team that wants to succeed. Population health management solutions can help you understand your employees’ needs, improve the overall care delivery experience, and ultimately make it easier to connect with your patients.

They Give You Data-Driven Insights

Population health management solutions can provide data critical to making decisions that improve your team’s experience and outcomes. They give you access to information on your employee’s needs, from their demographics to their healthcare history. This means you’ll be able to identify patterns in the types of services they need and how often those services are used.

Using this information, you can make better recommendations for how best to serve your employees in conjunction with a particular provider or facility, leading to better outcomes at lower costs. You can also use it to determine if any changes need to be made within your own organization.

Help You With Reimbursement Challenges

Population health management solutions are designed to help streamline the coding and billing process, so you’ll be able to get your patients’ claims paid faster than ever before. Your bottom line will benefit from this simple solution as well.

Population health management solutions also allow you to work more efficiently regarding quality reporting or employee engagement. You’ll have instant access to accurate data about each member of your plan through an easy-to-use dashboard interface.

This way, there won’t be any confusion or miscommunication during these processes. In addition, if something needs fixing within your organization, whether it’s an error with quality reporting or another problem altogether, you won’t have trouble fixing it.

Population Health Management Can Help You Save Money

Population health management is a way to improve your employees’ physical, emotional, and financial well-being. It can help you save money by keeping your employees in good health. This isn’t just a benefit for them and their families.

Population health management has the potential to save your company money as well. A study by Avelere Health for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that when an employer spends one dollar on workforce health, the company gets back $1.47 in benefits.

Healthy employees are more productive at work, which means they’ll get more done than those who aren’t feeling well or have an illness holding them back. And if an employee does get sick, population health management can help ensure that their condition doesn’t worsen into something more severe before it’s treated properly.

Conclusion

Population health management is a powerful tool to help you manage your employees’ health and well-being. It can help you save money by reducing the number of sick days and ER visits while also helping you identify opportunities to prevent chronic diseases early on. This is especially important when considering how much it costs to treat these diseases later in life.

Hopefully, this article has given insight into how population health management works and why it’s so important for employers and employees.