Top 5 population health stories of 2016
Emergency rooms grappling with an overburdened mental health system tops list, followed by the importance of measuring population health.
Emergency rooms fail in treating mental health; new approaches come to light
"More than 80 percent of emergency room physicians say the mental healthcare systems in their regions are dysfunctional, and do not adequately serve patients, according to a survey done in December by the American College of Emergency Physicians involving 1,500 of its members.
Unfortunately, thousands of people in need of mental health treatment are often being dropped at the emergency departments of their local hospitals, where under federal law doctors must evaluate these patients despite the limitations on ER-based mental health treatment."
When it comes to population health, you can't manage it if you can't measure it
"By and large, population health measurement efforts are poorly developed and uncoordinated – and without effective measurement, success will remain elusive.
Without population health measurement, in other words, there can be no population health management."
The population health trend is driving hospital real estate decisions:
"As population health leads health systems focus on patients, it's also forcing them to re-think how they approach their real estate decisions, affecting everything from location and building design to where certain services are located.
For example, population health is one of the factors that has pushed outpatient facilities, which were typically on a hospital campus, to off-campus locales, based largely on the desire to be out in the community."
Pokémon Go got people moving
"Pokémon Go was an instant summer sensation that many people in the healthcare and technology industries hailed as a harbinger of apps and devices designed to engage patients in new ways.
The exact extent to which it activated those people, and the promise that such tools ultimately hold for health apps, has been very difficult to calculate."
More than 65 million emergency department mental health visits were reported, with substance abuse behind 41 percent of them
"Mental and behavioral health issues, including drug addiction, are becoming a major focus for healthcare providers and payers as a new study show patients needing psychiatric services are filling emergency rooms.
Hospitals often don't have the beds or the professional expertise to treat patients needing psychiatric care, according to a study released Monday during a conference of the American College of Emergency Physicians."
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