What does it mean to create a healthy population?  It means not just treating patients for their specific illnesses but taking into account their whole health – the other factors that might contribute to their particular illness – then applying that kind of care to a group of people with similar health needs.  It’s that whole-person delivery of care that NCQA has been advocating and working toward since its inception more than 25 years ago.

NCQA recently added Population Health Management (PHM) as a new category of standards in our 2018 Health Plan Accreditation (HPA) program.

In this episode of Inside Health Care, Tricia Barrett, NCQA’s VP, Product Design and Support talks about Population Health and Population Health Management. She explains population health focuses on aspects of people’s lives that impact their health. These include medical care, public health interventions, genetics, and individual behavior, along with components of the social (ex: income, education, employment, and culture) and physical (ex: urban design, clean air, and water) environments.

Providing the necessary whole-person care and population health management, is one thing. Creating a means for accountability to ensure that whole-person care is delivered, is another.

This is where health care is moving. Patient-centered care is whole-person care and whole person care leads to population health and to creating a healthy population.

Tricia explains it all so well in this podcast. Take a listen and let us know what you think!