Enhancing Population Health: The Four Pillars of Effective Healthcare Delivery

Abstract

[Name] Population health is a broad term coined around three concepts to enhance potential health outcomes within a population. First, population health serves as the distribution of health outcomes within a population and secondly, as a health determinant that influences distribution. Thirdly, population health also refers to those policies and an intervention that impacts the determinant, which makes the term serve as a practical approach that is simply beyond normal public health. Since population health addresses the broader landscape of healthcare consumption, it rests on four pillars to enhance service delivery. The four pillars include care management, quality and safety, public health, and health policy, which results in a thriving healthcare environment if well-coordinated. Incorporating these four pillars into practice and education and their interactions provides a potential ground for achieving population health strategies and goals. Coordination of the four pillars becomes realized when the healthcare givers understand the importance of understanding the four concepts of health care management and passing such information to the public through education. Both parties engage in the practice. What does that imply? Based on Shahzad et al. (2019), Chronic care management becomes effective when both the caregiver and the beneficiary understand the basics of managing the chronic condition to improve care coordination across all settings in which such care is delivered. To this effect, one can argue that behavior, prevention, and education serve as potential concepts that enhance chronic care management. Like chronic care management, the quality and safety pillar demands collective efforts and collaboration of the patient and healthcare providers. Quality and safety concept calls for proper employment of the best healthcare measures for any noted health problem, which goes hand in hand with chronic care management. The collaboration of the two concepts, which involves the beneficiary (patient) and the caregiver, calls for support and recognition from the local, state, and the national public to define population healthcare. Unlike the two concepts argued above, the public health pillar comprises local and national efforts, involvement, and cooperation to ensure population health care remains defined (Kindig and Isham 2014). National efforts may become realized through institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), whose role is to ensure that the public gets access to better healthcare at any given time. As demanded through this pillar, local government bodies ensure the availability of clean water, vaccination, smoking cessation, and preparation for pandemics, among other considerations that can aid...