During a keynote address at this week's Allscripts Client Experience user conference in Chicago, David Nash, MD, founding dean of the Jefferson School of Population Health in Philadelphia, started with a well-known fact about American healthcare — our exorbitant medical expenditures aren't making us any healthier.
"Despite spending more than anyone else by a large margin, we're number 17 in the world in health outcomes," he said. "For the money we're spending, shouldn't we be in at least the top three or four?"
What can help bring outcomes more in line with costs is more of a focus on population health. Dr. Nash cited research that showed professional medical care to be just a small fraction of what affects a patient’s health. Behavior, environmental factors and genetics are much larger determinants of overall health and patient outcomes. However, 88 percent of the country's health and wellness spending goes toward professional medical care.
"So, we'd better get the [medical] care right," said Dr. Nash, "and coordinate everything else."
Both improving medical care and coordinating health outside of the hospital requires access to and use of data. Data from other care settings will help provide a more comprehensive picture of a patient's health and improve care across all sites, he said. Health information exchanges can provide access to "the right data at the right time so they can make the right decision," he said.
In addition to comprehensive patient data, improving population health will also require collecting and synthesizing information on patient outcomes to determine the best treatment options and reduce variation among physicians.
"In God we trust, but everyone else better bring their outcomes data," said Dr. Nash.
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