Will health care reform require new population health management strategies?

In response to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, employers may no long offer traditional employee health care benefits as they protect themselves from rising health care costs and seek to minimize their risk. How the shifting landscape of health care coverage will impact population health management providers, employers, and employees is the focus of a commentary in Population Health Management.

Bruce Sherman, MD, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (Cleveland, OH), and Chris Behling, AXA (New York, NY), explore many potential scenarios and conclude that employees and their families may be most impacted by these changes. In the article "Beyond Incentives: The Impact of Health Care Reform on Employer Population Health Management Strategies", they propose the need for new models of population health management services delivery.

"Sherman and Behling have done a great job outlining the challenges faced by every employer in our nation under health reform," says Editor-in-Chief David B. Nash, MD, MBA, Dean and Dr. Raymond C. and Doris N. Grandon Professor, Jefferson School of Population Health, Philadelphia, PA. "The success of Obamacare rests, in no small part, on following their advice!"