Abstract
Background: In the Netherlands, regions and collaborative care networks are making transformation plans to change health and care provisioning. These stakeholders are willing to adopt a population health management or integrated care based approach to increase the health and wellbeing of the population, but they struggle with what to do first. The Population Health Management Maturity Index (PHM-MI) was developed as an international tool to support regions in monitoring their progress and choosing their next steps.(1) The tool consists of six elements that support implementation: Accountable regional organization, cross-domain business model, integrated data-infrastructure, co-design with community and professionals, population health data analytics, and emergent implementation strategies.
Approach: This research builds on previous work around the PHM-MI, which was presented during earlier ICIC conferences. In this research, the PHM-MI was applied in the Netherlands in two different phases. First, the PHM-MI is part of a national monitoring program. Program managers from all collaborative care networks in the Netherlands (over 100 networks) were asked to fill out the PHM-MI for their network. Second, individual regions or networks were invited to apply the tool in their region. In this case, executive directors, project leaders and managers from all organizations involved in health and social services in the region or networks were invited to fill out the PHM-MI. Per region, the analysis was then discussed with the participants to share the narrative behind the numbers. These workshops aimed to provide in-depth insights in the progress of the implementation. Data collection of this second phase starts in November 2024.
Results: We are well aware that we don’t have the full results yet, these are expected in March 2025. The results consist of the overall numbers of the Netherlands of phase one, which provides a first overview on the progress of the collaborative care networks on the six elements. For phase two, the results include the numbers of two specific regions in the Netherlands which is a combination of the numbers and a narrative on their progress. These results demonstrate the strong areas and the areas with many opportunities to improve. Doing so, the tool also specifically raises awareness with regional leadership on their progress on working together with professionals and community members. This way, it supports them to include professionals and community members in the development of their plans early on. In addition, the process stimulates decision makers to deliberately invite the community as partner in changing health and care provision in the region.
Implications: Change is not a quick process. The PHM-MI is a tool that can support learning and monitoring progress on regional implementation processes. Next, this research demonstrates the strength of the narratives. As numbers are often still asked for by policy makers and high-level managers, these results stress the importance of including narratives next to meaningful numbers. Next steps are to include more regions, also internationally, to provide support and build on a knowledge base that can be shared broadly.