Abstract
Introduction: Regional health systems across the globe have a strong appetite to adopt population health management (PHM) approaches to enhance community health and wellbeing. However, bringing health system leaders together to successfully embed PHM approaches often proves challenging in practice. Regional health systems recognise the need to commit to long-term change and are looking for practical guidance on how to implement PHM approaches in their local context. The PHM Maturity Index tool (PHM-MI) is designed to sustainably advance the quintuple aims of healthcare for regional health systems i.e., improving population health outcomes, improving equity, improving consumer experiences, improving provider satisfaction and reducing per capita costs.
The PHM Maturity Index tool: The PHM-MI tool considers a balanced set of domains including regional governance, financial structures, data infrastructure, workforce and community co-design, data analysis, and innovative implementation strategies. The tool is designed to engage a broad range of local leaders including commissioners, providers, executives, directors, project leaders, managers, clinicians and consumers. Diverse representation is sought across health and social services organisations and local communities. Leaders need to start by assessing their current PHM capabilities. The PHM-MI facilitates this by helping identify PHM strengths and development areas against internationally recognised PHM best practice. As well as building local support and buy-in to implement PHM approaches, the PHM Maturity Index helps regions to prioritise and sequence a roadmap of strategies and resources to effectively implement PHM approaches that address local population needs.
Using the PHM-MI Tool: The PHM-MI tool offers a clear picture of the region's readiness to implement key PHM elements. Regional stakeholders assess each PHM element on a scale from 1 (non-existent) to 9 (fully implemented), and these findings are supplemented by workshops and interviews to build a rich picture of the region's strengths and development areas.
Regional PHM insights are visualised through an interactive dashboard, which enables comparisons across other regional health systems using the tool.
Learnings and next steps: In 2022 the tool was successfully piloted across the Central Coast regional health system in New South Wales, Australia. This pilot demonstrated the effectiveness of the PHM Maturity index in generating insights and guidance to support regional health system leaders to implement a regional PHM approach. The PHM Maturity Index tool helps regional health systems prioritise and sequence the practical strategies needed to implement a regional PHM approach.
In 2023 the aim is to apply the tool in the Netherlands, which will provide an international benchmarking dataset. As international adoption of the tool grows, we will increasingly be able to compare regional health systems within and between countries. This will build the evidence base for how to effectively implement PHM approaches and guide regions towards improving the health and wellbeing of their communities.