It’s challenging to provide care for the patients most in-need – the homeless, those with untreated, chronic health and mental illness. These patients often lack consistent primary care, and often only receive treatment when they go to the emergency room during an acute episode. It’s a lose-lose situation because the patients don’t sustain the improved health after leaving the ER, and costs are unsustainable for providers and U.S. taxpayers.

The federal government saw the need for better coordinated care of Medicaid and uninsured patients, resulting in the creation of the Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) program to help healthcare organizations transform how they deliver care to those patients. At its highest level, DSRIP is intended to advance the Institute for Healthcare Improvement “Triple Aim” of improving the health of the population, enhancing the experience and outcomes of the patient and reducing the per capita cost of care. DSRIP is also ultimately about Medicaid reform, moving to a system of care that promotes wellness rather than just manage sickness and promotes value of care over volume of care.

DSRIP points people in the right direction by emphasizing certain goals such as the “Triple Aim,” collaboration with community providers, avoiding preventable hospitalizations and clinical improvement for chronic diseases. What DSRIP does not do is specify how providers are going to accomplish those goals, which requires organizational change and new technologies. To complete the picture, healthcare organizations need a population health management strategy and solutions to enable that strategy.

Population health management solutions can reduce silos of care by sharing data and analytics across the community at the point-of-care. Patients are given a single plan of care focused on prevention and wellness that is then executed by a care team across the continuum efficiently and without redundancy. The result is an integrated community of providers that delivers better coordinated care to make patients healthier and keep them out of the ER and hospital settings.

The DSRIP program represents a great opportunity for eligible organizations to jumpstart a population health strategy. To learn more about the DSRIP program, you can watch this short video or contact us to discuss further.