Henry Ford Health Launches New Company to Advance Population Health

DETROIT – Henry Ford Health has launched a new subsidiary dedicated to advancing population health. The new non-profit company, Populance, supports doctors, hospitals and health plans by providing value-based care services designed to improve health care outcomes and enhance the patient experience while lowering the total cost of care. 

About 90% of the annual healthcare expenditure in the U.S. is for people with chronic and mental health conditions, with about 50% of healthcare costs incurred by just 5% of patients1. Primary care physicians are faced with the challenge of caring for patients who have multiple, complex conditions. 

Population health management is the process of improving the clinical health outcomes of a defined group of individuals, such as people with diabetes, through improved care coordination and patient engagement supported by appropriate financial and care models.

Populance offers a suite of population health management services, including care management, patient monitoring and digital outreach tools, to help physicians more effectively manage the care of patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure and COPD. The services are increasingly valuable as more and more insurers adopt value-based care payment models, which compensate healthcare providers for the quality of care they provide, rather than the number of services they deliver.  

“Healthcare consumers and employers continue to be challenged with the cost of care,” said Robin Damschroder, President, Value-Based Enterprise and Chief Financial Officer, Henry Ford Health. “Yet despite increased spending nationally, health outcomes have not improved for all populations in our communities. Populance helps identify and bridge these gaps in care.”

Since the early 2000s, Henry Ford Health and its subsidiary nonprofit health insurance company, Health Alliance Plan (HAP), have developed dozens of successful programs designed to help patients and members manage a variety of chronic conditions. Populance combines this expertise into a new organization. The health system was also an early advocate for value-based care, for which many of these programs are designed. 

“Because we know this approach to population health management works – for our patients, our members and our physicians – we want to make these services available to other physicians, health systems and health plans to create healthier, more equitable outcomes in all the communities we serve,” Damschroder said.

Case management is a key component of population health solutions. Populance case managers monitor and ensure patients understand physician instructions and adhere to care plans. For example, case managers make sure patients with diabetes have continuous glucose monitors, can understand the readings, and know how to use an insulin pump. 

By maintaining contact and open communications with patients, case managers also can ensure they have access to safe housing (heat and AC), transportation (for doctor appointments), and healthy foods, as well as any health plan benefits or government services they may be entitled to. If they do not, case managers help patients and families with support services that can help provide these resources. Similar outreach is done for patients who transition from the hospital to another setting such as a skilled nursing facility or home, a time when individuals are most at-risk for falling through the cracks.

Populance services are designed to reduce hospitalizations, readmissions and ER visits while enhancing and maximizing the patient’s time at home. Populance uses health analytics to identify and close gaps in care for high-risk patients. 

Christopher Stanley, MD, MBA, serves as president of Populance, having joined the organization with more than 30 years of experience across health system, physician group and health plan organizations, including his most recent role as Chief Population Health Officer at Sutter Health in Northern California. A pediatrician by training, Dr. Stanley is a U.S. Army veteran, having achieved the rank of Major.

“We have a unique opportunity to meet a critical community need like never before,” said Dr. Stanley. “Populance is being ‘birthed’ by a health system that has been serving the people of Michigan for more than 100 years. Our team members are already deeply rooted in this community just like our patients are. We know these populations. Populance knits together information from physicians, hospitals and health plans, as well as patients themselves, allowing our nurses, social workers, and other health professionals to help physicians meet the medical and social needs for community members who need help the most.”

“Populance is one of only a handful of organizations – both regionally and nationally – who can do this work at this scale,” Damschroder added. “We have the capabilities and are poised to make a positive impact on the health outcomes of all we serve, especially our most vulnerable populations.”

Populance, which is headquartered in Troy, Mich., has 150 team members who currently serve approximately 600,000 patients.

Learn more at www.populance.org.

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1Buttorff C, Ruder T, Bauman M. Multiple Chronic Conditions in the United States. Rand Corp.; 2017.

National health expenditure data: historical. Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Updated December 13, 2023. Accessed February 6, 2024. https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-reports/national-health-expenditure-data/historical

Holle, M., Wolff, T., & Herant, M. (2021). Trends in the Concentration and Distribution of Health Care Expenditures in the US, 2001-2018. JAMA network open, 4(9), e2125179. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.25179