UC Population Health

Established in 2019, UC Population Health (UCPH) has provided an organizational infrastructure (leadership, expertise, and project management) to execute a UC Health-wide strategy for population health management.

Population health refers to the process of improving health and health outcomes for a defined group of individuals. This includes ensuring enhanced care management for all patients supported by appropriate financial and clinical care models. Our goal is to advance value-based care delivery, improve patient outcomes, achieve equitable care, and optimize resource use and costs.

UCPH compares and shares outcomes and comparative data across our academic health centers (supported by the UCH Center for Data-driven Insights and Innovation). However, sharing data is not enough. Both clinical leadership, as well as a structured approach to implementation are needed. UCPH advances the ability of UC's six academic health centers to better manage their patient populations and address health disparities. UCPH both coordinates among existing system-wide initiatives focused on population health and facilitates new programs. This includes collaboration with the health services research community to leverage our collective expertise and evidence-based knowledge.

These efforts will also be critical to the continued financial success of UC’s academic health centers. This will require further adaptation of UC's health delivery model to optimize for a future state driven by value-based payment contracts and defined populations while relying less on the current fee-for-service model. UCPH's systemwide collaboration is laying the groundwork for that future so that access to world-class care is available to people in all the communities we serve.