A look at population health

By Michael D. Shaw Feb. 3, 2014

This HND piece explains the relatively new concept of population health—defined as "The health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group." While these groups are usually geographic, they can also comprise other populations, such as employees, ethnicities, those with disabilities, or those incarcerated.
Evaluating outcomes on the basis of a cohort, rather than on individual results is a necessary accommodation to the Feds being in charge, of course, but how this will affect health care long term is still an open question. More than that, "Giant" health care seems to require virtually endless amounts of IT, which always seems to be able to acquire funding.
Many "providers" (as in physicians) are complaining—with plenty of justification—that the tail is wagging the dog.  Read the complete article.