Dr Leonard Fromer Links Precision Medicine With Population Health Principles

Individualized medicine can complement the principles of population health to deliver better results for patients, according to Leonard M. Fromer, MD, FAAFP, executive medical director of the Group Practice Forum.

Transcript (slightly modified)

Can personalized medicine and the principles of population health be reconciled with one another, or are they at odds?

So here we are in the middle of a revolution in healthcare, moving from volume-based healthcare—how much care do we give?—to value-based care. No one’s waking up one morning and stepping right into value and leaving volume behind. So we really are moving from volume to volume plus value. And as we live in this volume plus value healthcare world, how do we reconcile the concepts of population health and dynamics disease state health and dynamics registries about accumulating data on the population we treat? And then, diving underneath that and saying, well, we have to reconcile that population analysis of the data with each individual person’s uniqueness and what do we do for that person within that population.

So are the two polar opposites or are they complementary? That’s the question. My belief is, and I think the data shows, that they complement each other. Because if we want to get the best Triple Aim results for patients, best outcomes, best experience in the care process, as they get those and we do it for lower cost in the population, deliver value. If we want to do that, it starts with, what does the science say around how patients need to be diagnosed and treated around a certain condition for instance. But also, what does the precision medicine initiative tell us about how we improve that population scorecard by getting great at what each individual unique patient needs for their own set of drivers, their own set of reasons why their body might need a different medication, or a different dose in a medication. Or of course also, approaching and doing something about their social dynamic and their social determinants.