Population Health Management

Population health management is increasingly being operationalized through condition-specific, risk-aligned specialty models rather than generic care management, with Strive Health’s value-based kidney care model emphasizing earlier CKD/ESKD identification, multidisciplinary coordination, conservative kidney management, and AI-enabled targeting to reduce avoidable utilization and total cost of care (HCTTF case study). At the same time, ACO enablement and Medicare chronic-care infrastructure are drawing new capital and platform competition—Pearl Health’s $110M raise and Innovaccer’s positioning around CMS ACCESS signal that vendors are racing to become the operating layer for attribution, risk stratification, care gap closure, and performance management in downside-risk environments. The strategic tension for health systems, payers, and ACOs is shifting from whether to pursue VBC to how much control to retain over enabling capabilities as specialty partners, digital MSK models, behavioral health integration, oncology collaborations, and post-acute visibility become central to managing longitudinal cost and quality.