Healthcare leaders who are flexible and innovative can help advance the goals of population health management (PHM), including better health, better care, and lower costs. An article in Executive Insight discusses four leadership imperatives that will spur progress towards meeting these goals.

Imperative 1. Commit to a New View of Healthcare

Part of achieving the improved population health and care quality goals associated with PHM is developing a perspective that acknowledges the new realities of an increasingly value-based healthcare system, according to authors Kenneth Kaufman, Mark E. Grube and Robert W. York of Kaufman, Hall & Associates, LLC. To operate under a PHM-based model, hospitals must make significant reforms, as well as accept the larger role non-hospital community institutions will necessarily play in such a system.

Hospital leaders should plan on how they can achieve financial and clinical relevance in an ambulatory and telehealth-focused delivery system. "This path holds the opportunity to maintain relevance and market share — and therefore financial and clinical strength — in the changing market," the authors write.

Imperative 2. Build Agility

Healthcare leaders must also work to improve their organisations' agility, balancing their management of current operations and the dramatic changes necessary to keep pace with the industry. This may be difficult for legacy organisations, which will likely have to redesign certain aspects of their operations, workforce and infrastructure to make the transition.

"Agile leaders recognise the value of collaboration with all stakeholders who are willing to contribute energy and new ideas. Sharing one's 'perceived power' with others is a critical aspect," the authors note. "Working with the best ideas, agile leaders will formulate a new vision of their organisations' future, and through teamwork, will do the hard work needed to make the transformation."

See also: Three Steps to Thinking Like a Leader
 
Imperative 3: Experiment and Innovate

Continuing to innovate and experiment is also important. Effective leaders know how to look within and beyond healthcare for models that work. These leaders understand that some experiments will fail and that failure is an integral part of innovation, creativity, and the journey to value, the authors say. As an example, they cite University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center's 2012 "Moon Shots" initiative to drastically reduce mortality from seven types of cancer. The goals are to identify a population segment in need of preventative efforts, target environmental and behavioural factors contributing to health problems in that segment, and work with stakeholders to mitigate those factors.

Imperative 4. Use Integrated Planning and a Blueprint for the PHM Journey

Leadership must ensure that the foundational planning process is grounded in fact-based market, financial and clinical/quality realities, and the organisation's current and expected performance related to these realities. The optimal delivery system for each organisation will balance population size, access, resources, quality of care, cost per unit of service and competitive considerations. "A blueprint identifies the items to tackle first, but leaders ensure that all of the puzzle pieces are on the table so that the organisation applies objective criteria to drive delivery decisions and their implementation," the authors write.  

Source: Executive Insight
Image credit: Pixabay

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healthmanagement, population health, management, value-based care, telehealth, lower cost, healthcare leaders Healthcare leaders who are flexible and innovative can help advance the goals of population health management, including better health, better care, and lower costs. An article in Executive Insight discusses four leadership imperatives that will spur prog