Dive Brief:
- Because cardiac services are a moneymaker for hospitals, organizations often invest heavily in cardiac care. According to a recent Healthcare Leaders interview with senior healthcare execs, population health efforts are poised to become a larger part of the cardiac department.
- Senior healthcare leaders polled plan to invest in the following kinds of population health efforts: ensuring patients receive medication before leaving the hospital; having a nurse call patients post-discharge; bundling payments for surgical patients and assuming responsibility for the patients after discharge; and offering full-spectrum care including disease management and wellness.
- Investment in population health is expected to trump both physician salaries and IT integration in the coming years.
Dive Insight:
This movement toward population health may be a newer one in the area of cardiac care. Cardiac services have traditionally been slave to increasing technology, sometimes more for the sake of income and competition than for patient outcomes. A 2013 article in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes found that hospitals spent billions on angioplasty programs from 2004 to 2008, but the services were built near other hospitals in highly competitive markets instead of where need for the programs were the greatest. The investments did not greatly improve patient care. The new survey seems to indicate a change in direction toward investing in the community's cardiac health.