Purchasing Population Health

The fundamental assertion of this book is that population health improvement will not be achieved until appropriate financial incentives are designed for this outcome. This one sentence summarizes the message of David Kindig’s book, which directly addresses the current turbulence in health care and the lack of focus on value for all public and private investments to improve health. This proposal for a new health outcome purchasing standard is derived from Dr. Kindig’s training as a physician and his experience in public and private health care management. While intended to address the cost, quality, and access goals of the failed federal reform effort of 1994, it envisions using health outcomes as a public- and private-sector purchasing standard for medical care as well as other health-promoting sectors such as education and the environment. In language accessible to public and corporate policymakers, Kindig summarizes the vast technical literature in the areas of health outcomes and quality measurement, the determinants of health, health economics, rationing, and vertical integration. Drawing from the literature familiar to faculty and students in the health professions and business, this book will serve to inform a lay readership concerned about health care quality and expenditures. While based on research evidence, the final two chapters, “Making It Happen” and “The Case for Action, the Price of Inertia” outline how the ideas in this book can actually be put to work for the health and benefit of all in the twenty-first century.