Want to achieve effective health care, reduced costs, increased quality, population health, widespread prevention and seamless health information access?
It’s easy, says this article in Population Health Management: mix one part PHO with one part HRB to create a HAPPI.
This correspondent was confused too, but that’s what’s proposed by three smart academics from Johns Hopkins, Arizona State University and UC Berkeley.
As I understand it, Population Health Organizations (PHOs) would be responsible for all medical, public health, community and social services in a defined geographic area and coordinate them with local education, housing and labor. Much of it would be paid for by a pooled risk-adjusted global or capitated payment (budget) from all insurers.
Each organization would be paired with a Health Record Bank (HRB), which would act as a huge data warehouse that not only stores all medical information, but any other publically available information on every individual enrolled in the PHO. The HRBs would be owned and operated by “trusted custodial organizations.” Data access would be ultimately controlled by each patient.
The authors believe that patient payments would be a source of additional revenue for their PHOs. Examples include buying “apps” that are tailored to their individual health needs, or selling their personal health information, especially if it means helping physicians buy an electronic health record or access cutting edge research.
