Commentary: Personalized health planning and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: an opportunity for academic medicine to lead health care reform.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) mandates the exploration of new approaches to coordinated health care delivery--such as patient-centered medical homes, accountable care organizations, and disease management programs--in which reimbursement is aligned with desired outcomes. PPACA does not, however, delineate a standardized approach to improve the delivery process or a specific means to quantify performance for value-based reimbursement; these details are left to administrative agencies to develop and implement. The authors propose that coordinated care can be implemented more effectively and performance quantified more accurately by using personalized health planning, which employs individualized strategic health planning and care relevant to the patient's specific needs. Personalized health plans, developed by providers in collaboration with their patients, quantify patients' health and health risks over time, identify strategies to mitigate risks and/or treat disease, deliver personalized care, engage patients in their care, and measure outcomes. Personalized health planning is a core clinical process that can standardize coordinated care approaches while providing the data needed for performance-based reimbursement. The authors argue that academic health centers have a significant opportunity to lead true health care reform by adopting personalized health planning to coordinate care delivery while conducting the research and education necessary to enable its broad clinical application.

Duke Scholars

Author Michaela Ann Dinan Population Health Sciences

Author Ralph Snyderman Medicine