John Snow's Broad Street pump intervention had nothing to do with population health, but health reform does?

[Beatrice Yearwood]

Since the passage of health reform, I have been seeing the term population health in healthcare system magazines.  A "retweeted" article in the March issue of Hospitals and Health Systems is an example of the confusion the term is suddenly causing.  Prior to health reform, the term population health was used almost exclusively in public health publication.  But now the term is being applied to a pool of patients assigned to a physician via a physicians group practice, Medicare patients in  ACOs, and a health plan's enrollees.  Now comes an article titled A New Kind of Reform: Population Health. Reform?  John Snow is probably spinning at warp speed in his grave. 

Two quotes from the article illustrate how the term population health has been appropriated by healthcare.

"Population health will lead to better quality care, improved safety and better prevention strategies, all of which look favorably on the provider because the result is a greater number of healthy people" 

"Population health will lead to better quality care, improved safety and better prevention strategies, all of which look favorably on the provider because the result is a greater number of healthy people"

Click on the link to read the complete article.

http://www.hhnmag.com/hhnmag/HHNDaily/HHNDailyDisplay.dhtml?id=3790...