Summary: This week, we are joined by <a href="https://med.nyu.edu/pophealth/faculty/choksd01" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dave Chokshi</a>. Dave is the Chief Population Health Officer of OneCity Health and Senior Assistant Vice President at New York City Health + Hospitals—the largest public health care system in the U.S. He practices primary care at Bellevue Hospital and is a Clinical Associate Professor of Population Health and Medicine at the NYU School of Medicine.<br> We talk about what population health is, how it is distinct from public health, and what value it adds to our healthcare system. We also talk about how in some ways it might contribute to the erosion of relationships between primary care providers and patients, how that can be remedied, and how the small 1 or 2 doctor practice may fit into a population health management vision. We talk about a <a href="http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/1134851" target="_blank" rel="noopener">piece he wrote with Neil Calman and Diane Hauser</a> about what they call the “expanded denominator,” and how that may further goals of public health and accountable care. Lastly, we talk about population health approaches in <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23385269" target="_blank" rel="noopener">urban</a> and rural settings, and how we should think about the opioid epidemic from a population health vantage point.<br> We reference a few articles throughout our conversation: Christine Sinsky’s already classic <a href="http://annals.org/aim/article/2546704/allocation-physician-time-ambulatory-practice-time-motion-study-4-specialties" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Annals paper</a> detailing that physicians spend two hours on administrative tasks for every hour they see patients, and our <a href="http://rospod.org/2017/01/17/journal-club-sinsky-et-al-allocation-of-physician-time-in-ambulatory-practice-a-time-and-motion-study-in-4-specialties/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">journal club</a> on that paper. Robin Williams’ and colleagues Health Affairs blog on <a href="http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2017/03/13/to-battle-the-opioid-overdose-epidemic-deploy-the-cascade-of-care-model/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">utilizing the HIV cascade of care</a> to battle the opioid epidemic, and <a href="http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/35/3/401.abstract" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lawrence Casalino and colleagues</a> work calculating what we spend measuring the care we provide. In addition, we reference the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s <a href="https://addiction.surgeongeneral.gov/surgeon-generals-report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">landmark report</a> on addiction.<br> A quick note about a word we use frequently but didn’t pause to define for listeners – attribution. <a href="http://www.hhnmag.com/articles/3650-whose-patient-is-this-anyway" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Attribution</a> is the assignment of a specific patient to a specific primary care physician in a health system. Once a patient is attributed to a PCP or health system, that PCP and health system is held accountable for the patient’s quality measures and healthcare costs within ACOs or other alternative payment contracts. This still applies patients who do not frequently access the healthcare system through traditional channels or most frequently see specialists, who perhaps have never seen the assigned PCP, and is therefore at times controversial.<br> A little more background on <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Chokshi%20DA%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=27806232" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Dave Chokshi</a>: He was Assistant Vice President of Ambulatory Care Transformation at NYC Health + Hospitals and director of Population Health Improvement at NYU School of Medicine. In 2012-13, he served as a White House Fellow at the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, where he was the principal health advisor in the Office of the Secre...
