Patient-Centered Care and Population Health: Establishing Their Role in the Orthopaedic Practice

As health care increasingly emphasizes high value, the terms "population health" and "patient-centered care" have become common, but their application is less clear. Patient-centered care encourages using data to optimize care for an individual. Population health offers a framework to consider how to efficiently and effectively manage a condition for a population, how prevention affects large groups, and the specific distribution of a given disorder. Integrating both concepts into practice can facilitate required outcome-measure reporting and potentially improve patient outcomes. Clinical practice guidelines and appropriate use criteria are examples of reconciliation of these topics. By embracing attempts to decrease variation in treating musculoskeletal disorders while personalizing delivery to individual patients, surgeons may benefit from the improvement of both efficiency and patient experience.