How Population Health Data Drives Primary Care Cost Savings
Proactive MD’s advanced primary care model leverages population health data and care teams to drive cost savings.
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By - Primary care lies at the center of care delivery. For Proactive MD, the advanced primary care model extends beyond traditional primary care, leveraging population health data analytics to drive cost savings through a care team approach.
A per-member, per-month capitated payment model has allowed Proactive MD’s model to thrive, John Collier, CEO of Proactive MD and Jeremy VanderKnyff, vice president, shared in a recent episode of Healthcare Strategies, an Xtelligent Healthcare Media podcast.
“This allows our physicians and our care team more time with that individual, more time to truly look at them in their whole person and their whole diagnosis and not just a code,” Collier explained. “Our job is to build a model and to empower physicians to practice a deep level of population health that is also personalized.”
The care team includes a primary care provider and patient advocate, typically a licensed clinical social worker, partnering together in a “Batman and Robin” style relationship, according to Collier. Their focus is a relationship with the patient that extends beyond the four walls of the clinic to examine a patient’s social determinants of health, home environment, and family.
“Part of what powers that is the people, the patients, but it’s also the data. One of the things that differentiates an advanced primary care model is the way that we look at patient data,” VanderKnyff explained. “Our goal is to be able to look behind those numbers to find a new way that we can better care for our patients, empowering those physicians, empowering those patient advocates with deeper insights into health behavior, into population health trends.”
Proactive MD is stepping beyond the bounds of traditional primary care, using population health analytics to drive decision making and equip the care team with patient insights. The approach is also demonstrating substantial cost savings, which the organization has validated.
In an analysis comparing baseline spend to data two years later, those members who engaged in Proactive MD’s health centers showed a $42 lower per-member, per-month cost. Comparatively, patients who did not engage in the model had a total cost, on average, $129 more per-member, per month.
“We went back and looked at the data in multiple ways,” VanderKnyff emphasized. “The only statistically significant result we found was this pretty massive delta between the unengaged and engaged population.”
Not only is the advanced primary care model creating a team of providers to focus on patient care, but the generated cost savings also speak for themselves.
“Every day that the power of primary care works at a broad scope, primary care can impact a population, and it can bend the cost curve,” Collier concluded.
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