Hospitals and health systems throughout the world are working to transform their partnership models to improve patient care and manage population health. Recently, however, these efforts have stalled as stakeholders debate how to name and frame this transformation.

In this research briefing, we clarify the eight mission-critical features of any successful integrated population health model, regardless of what the model is called.

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To improve clinical outcomes and slow health care spending, health care leaders around the world are trying to build partnership models that emphasise provider cooperation and 'patient‑centredness.' Current models of care are not equipped to manage today's demand pressures or their accompanying expenditure spikes, making care transformation an imperative for health systems pursuing population health management.

We know that how we deliver health care needs to change—but recently, the focus of discussions on care transformation has shifted from how we should improve care to what we should call this improvement. Let's refocus on the process of improving care.

Regardless of what we call the partnership model that enables improvement in patient care, we can describe our charge as attempts to:

Encourage stakeholders to work together in a person-centred approach to effectively manage a population in the lowest-cost appropriate setting and to reduce inappropriate demand for treatment.

To be successful in the future, a health care partnership model must address the eight issues included in this definition:

1. Encourage (p. 7)
Successful management of your population’s health will require you to effectively boost cooperation and efforts to shift patients to the correct site of care.

2. Stakeholders (p. 9)
Similarly, we're increasingly recognising that for the size of population-wide health care improvement and management we’re after, a much broader group of partners is needed—many of whom we've not worked with before.

3. Work together (p. 12)
The kind of care we’re envisioning must overcome turf wars to achieve collective action.

4. Person-centred (p. 14)
Successful population health management must focus on the whole person.

5. Effectively manage (p. 18)
Population health managers must empower patients to play a greater role in their own self-management.

6. Cost-appropriate (p. 22)
To ensure that your population health work is both scalable and sustainable, you must ensure that your care delivery strategy is cost-appropriate. This means prioritising top-of-license work.

7. Population (p. 26)
Leaders in population health and integrated care avoid one-size-fits-all health management models for their communities. Instead, they stratify their populations into distinct patient groups and create unique intervention strategies for each segment.

8. Reduce demand (p. 29)
When addressing the seven issues discussed above, emphasize the benefits of care transformation. It's not about saving cash—it's an opportunity to reduce avoidable demand.