Go back to the 2004 strategic plan offered by Dr. David Brailer, the first national coordinator for health IT, and you'll find that improving population health was one of the four major goals of a nationwide push for interoperable EHRs. But now, six years later, a government report indicates that software to track population health at physician practices is not up to snuff, Information Week reports.

Practices interviewed for the report by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for the most part were not even looking for tools to collect and analyze data for what AHRQ calls practice-based population health, or PBPH. "Several of the 27 providers we interviewed said either that they were unable to find systems that include population management functionalities or that the products they had purchased are not living up to their expectations in performing these management tasks," according to the AHRQ report. But lack of demand for such functionality doesn't give vendors much of an incentive to produce software to support population health by focusing on disease prevention and management.

AHRQ sees some hope in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, since the reform law does encourage adoption of practice models such as the patient-centered medical home. But more should be done, the agency says. "Reimbursement with a greater emphasis on outcomes could provide additional resources and incentives for primary-care practices to engage in PBPH. Increased provider demand would probably motivate IT vendors to develop applications that support population management," reads the report.

AHRQ also suggests that future requirements for "meaningful use" of health IT include measures related to practice-based population health. "PBPH could most directly be supported by [the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] if PBPH functionalities are incorporated into those criteria. ARRA could also increase the amount of information available in electronic form by boosting EHR adoption and health information exchange nationwide," the agency contends. "Finally, the ARRA-funded extension centers could provide training to help providers engage in PBPH."

For more information:
- click through to this InformationWeek story
- read the AHRQ report (.pdf)

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