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What Does Population Health Really Mean?

By The SHSMD Team posted 12-18-2019 12:06 PM

  
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Population health is a term widely used in health care, but not everyone employs the same definition. Often its meaning depends on who is being asked. Health administrators may have different answers than those in academia.

From a health care marketing perspective, population health encompasses a number of different factors. The challenge is balancing them all to ensure population health management succeeds — a topic discussed at the SHSMD Connections 2019 session "Population Health Defined and Explored," led by Susan Dubuque, principle of NDP Agency.

Clearing the Confusion of Population Health

The goal of Dubuque's session was to interactively gather input from the field of marketing professionals present in order to better define the marketer's role in the population health space.

"If you ask consumers, first of all, they don't have a clue what the word means. Even if you ask health care marketing professionals, there is a lot of confusion," stated Dubuque. "Some people perceive population health as wellness, exercising and eating right. Other people see it as a financial play, the formation of accountable care organizations and the like. So, it has different meanings to different organizations and the role of marketing has been equally murky."

Despite the confusion, Dubuque believes marketing and strategy professionals can play an exciting and crucial role in helping their organizations define a population health strategy and implement it for everyone's benefit.

Why Marketers Need to Have a Seat the Table

A common obstacle Dubuque and her colleagues encounter is being left out of the population health conversation. For marketing strategy professionals to be effective, they have to first get invited to the table in the development and planning stages,

"Very often things that are relative to population health either live in a clinical space or in a financial space and the strategic marketing folks are called in at the eleventh hour," she noted. "I think a lot of the research capabilities, the strategic planning capabilities and our understanding of human nature can bring a wealth of knowledge, intelligence and an important understanding for an organization. Together, strategic marketing, clinical and financial professionals can create and implement a population health strategy that makes sense."

Why Is Population Health So Important?

As the general population is living longer and chronic conditions in all generations are on the rise, Dubuque believes there is not only a moral imperative to focus on population health but also a financial one.

"We have a lot of severe health issues bobbling up in our country. Diabetes, obesity. They are draining health systems financially and they are draining our population of life, quality of life and quality of health," she cautioned.

Creating a More Efficient, Effective Strategy

To better understand how an organization's current population health strategy is performing, or if an organization is preparing to review strategy, Dubuque advised learning where an organization's initiatives currently live. This may involves parties responsible for performing community health needs assessments, those in finance who make decisions impacting population health issues and anyone in clinical care who has influence. Once you identify where initiatives are based, the next step is offer to participate.

"I think a lot of times people don't think about marketing other than in a promotional angle. But my professional colleagues have so much to bring to the party. Marketing people may not be clinical people, but we are experts at getting people to change their behavior," shared Dubuque. "Every time I get you to change which health care organization you use for your health services, I am getting you to change your behavior. If we can apply those same techniques to get people to also change their health behaviors, we can impact health communitywide."

To access more helpful information on population health and strategic management for hospitals and health systems, please check out our podcast episodes and virtual conference on hospitals and health care strategy, marketing, communications and public relations.
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