1 May 2019
The Population Health Management Working Party was formed in September 2018. We have circa 20 members including actuaries, academics and health professionals, including international representation, from a wide range of organisations, including insurers, consultancies and the UK’s National Health Service.
Population Health Management considers the distribution of health outcomes within a population and how to impact these outcomes in the most optimal way for the group as a whole. It is a wide field and so the Working Party is initially focussing on the specific topic of impactability modelling. The predictive risk stratification and segmentation models typically utilised in population health approaches have focused on identifying population groups that have a high risk of experiencing an adverse event, such as an unplanned hospital admission, or have a high cost profile. However, the success of risk stratification at the whole-population level depends not just on identifying those most at risk of an adverse event, but rather in identifying those who are most at risk and most likely to respond positively to a given intervention – i.e. to be ‘impactable’. The combination of risk stratification, impactability modelling and actuarial variability analysis can not only help to target the most promising patients for medical management, but also support the improvement of resource allocation across a local health economy.
The key areas the working party is exploring include:
- Deriving a working definition of impactability modelling – (e.g. analysis which quantifies the extent to which a defined population cohort is predicted to respond to a given healthcare intervention under specified circumstances)
- Exploring an understanding of different approaches to measuring and modelling impactability including the skills, tools and techniques needed to achieve each approach
- The practical challenges and issues which are often encountered in applying these approaching in the management and delivery of health services
- Issues of public perception, inequality and ethics
We will be presenting an overview of our initial work at the IFoA Protection, Health and Care Conference in June 2019.
Please direct any enquiries to Mairi Russell, Communities Manager at the IFoA.