By Bernadette Keefe MD

On July 16^th 2015 I had the pleasure of being on a panel discussing Population Health Management with eloquent, smart colleagues: Dan Munro (@danmunro) Janice McCallum (@janicemccallum), Deryk Van Brunt (@HCI_Solutions) and Justin Lanning (@LanningHlthcare). It was a fascinating wide ranging discussion covering the definition of population health, the mechanisms and strategies of population health management (including the overriding importance of data collection/analysis and practicing medicine/providing healthcare in teams), the value of universal medical coverage (despite ACA still too many uncovered), issues around security and privacy of data and the lack of health information technology standards and EHR interoperability (need for a patient identifier), patient empowerment and access to records and relevant health data to enable better self care, issues regarding the social determinants of health and examples of strategy/success stories, incentives and tools for value based care and optimal outcomes, the challenges of behavioral/ lifestyle change, health literacy and patient engagement, the importance of context to better treat patients and obtain improved outcomes, the role of community in population health and the utterly unsustainable level of cost of healthcare in the U.S., among other topics.