While the healthcare industry is doubling down on population health efforts as it works toward the triple aim, a study from HIMSS found few organizations use health IT tools to assist in these efforts.
The study gathered insight from approximately 200 healthcare executives on their population health initiatives. Two-thirds of respondents said their organizations currently have population health initiatives in place. Most of these initiatives focus on chronic disease management (83 percent of organizations with current initiatives) and wellness and preventive health (82 percent).
However, the study found just 25 percent of organizations with initiatives in place use a specific IT vendor solution for their population health efforts.
The HIMSS report suggests key areas where a vendor-provided solution could aid organizations in their population health initiatives, including business intelligence and analytics, data warehouse and aggregation and patient dashboards.
Of those organizations without current initiatives in place, more than half plan to start one, but there remains "a high level of uncertainty" about using a vendor solution, according to the report.
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