Why Vendors Must Build a Winning Population Health Team

In order to excel at population health, you have to put all the important pieces together, just as a great coach knows that to win, you have to have a stellar team that plays well together. When Michael Jordan first started playing with the Chicago Bulls, he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the heading A Star is Born a month into his professional career. In his second year in the NBA, Jordan set the still-unbroken record for points in a playoff game with 63 points against the Celtics. Yet even with Jordan's incredible performance, the Celtics still won the game and swept the series.

What made the difference? Jordan was just one superstar against a great team. The Bulls only started to win consistently once Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant began to play at Michael Jordan's level. Once the Bulls had a solid team, the wins naturally followed.

Creating a Single Solution

In population health, there are many solutions on the market today that excel in one particular area of population health, like a lone superstar Michael Jordan. These solutions might be excellent at aggregating data, have incredible algorithms to stratify patients, or have the best care management workflow on the market. Even with great functionality in one area, providers need more to succeed. They need more to win.

Currently, the marketplace has no single solution that delivers well in all facets of population health. This causes many providers to use multiple solutions in their population health strategy. Luckily for providers, many vendors continue to develop and improve their solutions in pursuit of a comprehensive solution that fulfills all provider needs. If vendors want to take their population health solution to the next level, they need to supplement and support the skills of their superstar tool by providing the necessary tools to make their entire solution great. Then the wins will follow.