-
Medical and health sciences
- Health care administration
- Health information systems of medical informatics
- Health management
- Primary health care
Background and Problem Statement The increasing demand for care in a system with limited resources necessitates 'management' and led to the emergence of the Triple Aim in healthcare. Recently, a fifth quality dimension - equity - was added, resulting in the Quintuple Aim. The WHO is convinced that better integration of public health and primary care can contribute to this. Population (Health) Management (PM) is traditionally described as a strategy to improve the health outcomes of a specific population and the distribution of these outcomes within this group. It is also a response to the health inequities highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic, which are present at various levels within and outside primary care practice. This ranges from inequities in needs, risks, and social determinants of health, to the level of care demand (inequity by access, by health literacy), and the level of disease, therapy, and prognosis. Integrated care across sectors is seen as an essential ingredient in PM, but it is still unclear what is meant by Population (Health) Management, especially in the context of primary healthcare. However, PM also appears in the recent New Deal for the General Practitioner (practice) of Federal Minister of Public Health Frank Vandenbroucke and in the policy notes of Vivel, the Flemish Institute for Primary Care. There is a need for a conceptualization of this term within primary care practice. At the same time, it is important to evaluate bottom-up examples of population management in Flemish primary care practices and their added value in terms of equity. The ultimate goal is to develop a narrative of PM in primary care, with particular attention to equity. This can ensure that politics, science, education, and the field are aligned in further working with the concept.
Research Questions and/or Hypotheses How can population management in primary care lead to more equity?
- How can population management be conceptualized within the context of primary care practice?
- How do general practitioners working in primary care perceive this concept?
- What examples of population management exist in primary care in Flanders?
- What is the nature of this population management?
- How does this example contribute to equity?
- What are the facilitating and inhibiting contextual factors for the application of population management in primary care practice, and what mechanisms promote equity?
Methodology
- Scoping review of international literature + expert group
- Focus group(s) and interview(s) with general practitioners working in primary care practice
- Case study of examples + interviews with various primary care actors
- Pilot study for an intervention (participatory action research)