Population health management: an emerging approach for pharmaceutical companies?
By April Santos, Senior Account Executive
Last week we held the first event in our new summer roundtable series, bringing together subject matter experts to share their insight and experience on particular topics relevant to the NHS, service providers and pharma.
Our first theme was population health management and what this really means for the NHS. We were joined by Adrian McCourt (Population Health Management Consultant) and Sam Hepplewhite (Executive Director for Vaccinations and Primary Care, South East London ICS).
Population health management is about understanding the needs and challenges of the individual, rather than just treating their disease. It involves understanding local health pressures which will differ enormously between areas, and how best to deliver that support to meet their needs. As one disease often leads to another, these patients often have at least one co-morbidity, so treating the patient holistically rather than the disease alone is imperative. For example, in patients with heart failure, only 1% will have no other condition.
Adrian noted that a staggering 80% of the impact on health and care outcomes is non-clinical, signalling the urgency of adopting new approaches and taking into consideration the bio-psycho-social aspects when trying to improve outcomes. How do we unpick this huge percentage – could the answer lie within changing the way we allocate our resources, or perhaps making use of our hidden workforce like carers and the thousands of volunteers?
Sam described how population health management was applied to the COVID-19 vaccine effort in South East London, where community leaders were used to access and engage groups who had higher levels of vaccine hesitancy. By understanding the communities they served, the team were able to make the most of touch points, and ensure the needs of their community was central to their strategy.
During the roundtable we discussed how pharmaceutical companies are investing more in this space, shifting their approach to focus on earlier support and intervention rather than clinical delivery and outcome only. We heard of initiatives taking place at local level and making an impact on small communities – but what needs to happen to drive these at scale?
Stay tuned – we will discuss this and more in one of our next roundtable events.
Our next one is taking place on Thursday 30th June, we will be joined by Mike Bell (Chairman, Croydon Health Services NHS Trust) to discuss how Integrated Care Systems are evolving and what pharma specifically needs to prepare for, as well as the latest developments from NHS ConfedExpo.
Spaces are limited, so sign up now to secure your place:
Integrated Care Systems: how they are evolving, and what to expect after implementation Speaker: Mike Bell (Chairman, Croydon Health Services NHS Trust) Thursday 30th June, 1-2pm, location: Meeting Room 7. Eastside, Kings Cross Station, London N1C 4AX
Sign up here: Eventbrite