Putting information into the hands of Primary Care Networks

From smoking through to late diagnoses of cancer, understanding population health is critical to delivering better healthcare and reducing demand pressure on hospitals. The new GP contract recognises this and links improvements to funding for general practices working through Primary Care Networks (PCNs).

Surrey Heartlands were quick to recognise the importance of understanding population health, including wider determinants, as critical to the success of their Integrated Care System. So, they commissioned Edge Health to develop a bespoke tool to help understand population health.

Population Health Platform (PHP) provides access to over 250 relevant metrics from a range of sources. It allows users to see:

• The geography covered by each PCN, including heatmaps of high intensity users
• How population age, sex, and disease prevalence compare
• The utilisation of secondary care services, such as non-elective admissions and their cost

To help end users, PHP has several explore and search functions. One of these uses smart algorithms to pick out thematic areas where a practice is a consistent outlier. Through providing comparisons with other practices in their PCN and area more broadly, PHP opens an opportunity for the system to work together in finding and sharing solutions.

”We have had a strong working relationship with Edge Health over a number of engagements within our system. We have always been impressed with the professionalism and technical expertise of the Edge team, which is combined with a comprehensive approach to engaging frontline clinicians. Work is delivered to a high standard and with a real pace to delivery, even in projects with complexities relating to Information Governance and data availability”   Director, Integrated Care Partnership.

If you are interested to learn more about how PHP could help you, get in touch with George at [email protected].