Dive Brief:
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With National Coordinator for Health IT Karen DeSalvo naming population health management as one of ONC's main focus areas for 2014, population health tools, techniques, and products are likely to become the latest must watch buzzword for this year.
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Several sessions at HIMSS next week focus on population health and how ACOs can become better population health managers.
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One session, "Learning from Early ACO Adopters," is likely to be especially popular, as it's run by two senior executives at Texas Health Resources and will describe how the system successfully manage its patient populations.
Dive Insight:
There has been a slow but steady buildup of action in the population health arena over the past 18 months to two years, but this should be the year when it all breaks out. With the push from the ONC's DeSalvo, ACOs raring to go, and EMRs widely in place to stock population management engines, it's finally go time. This doesn't mean that will see immediate results of course, but it does mean that will see some new opportunities for helping more people stay well.