Northwell Health, a provider based in New York State, is no stranger to population health efforts.
During a presentation at the HIMSS Pop Health Forum in Chicago, two presenters outlined where the system was, where it is and where it’s going in terms of patient-related efforts.
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“Population health, in addition to community health, is our business focus,” Yulia Kogan, Northwell’s director of information technology, said. “Valued health services are here to stay. We want to deliver this value to our patients.”
This focus has been evident since 2010.
At that time, the system began investing in a number of specific applications. Most prominently, it zeroed in on EHRs. But it has also taken an interest in care tools, a health information exchange, a clinical portal, a patient portal and an enterprise data warehouse.
“The journey from 2010 to 2017 has been a lot of creative thinking and a lot of trying to stay ahead in the game,” said Simita Mishra, Northwell’s service line leader for population health and the delivery system reform incentive payment department.
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Now, the focus has changed slightly. Northwell has shifted to start looking at how various elements of coordinated care tie into population health. The system is examining various performance metrics and using report cards to understand compliance. Additionally, physicians use clinical documentation tools to see comprehensive gaps in care.
What does the future hold for Northwell Health? Kogan pointed to its four areas of focus for the next three years.
The first is predictive analytics. By leveraging this technique, Northwell plans to take a proactive approach. “We want to have this big data not just for the sake of big data, but so we actually can predict based on anomalies as well,” Kogan said.
Northwell also wants to highlight virtual pre-visit and post-visit services, as well as virtual health services in general. As Mishra noted, the system hopes to telemedicine a commodity by 2020. These offerings will be of particular importance as the industry moves forward, and Northwell wants to make them scalable for every hospital unit.
Finally, the system is examining ways to better utilize the social determinants of health to improve overall patient care.
And what about after that? By 2050, Northwell predicts that healing machines (such as those used in the 2016 movie Passengers) will become the norm. Healthcare will largely be personalized, and predictive analytics will be broadly used.
“Hopefully by 2050, our vision will come to a reality,” Kogan concluded.
Image: Dmitrii_Guzhanin, Getty Images
