You don’t hear folks talk a lot about population management when they are discussing EHRs. To me this is a key capability and should be central to the decision making process. Sure it great to have all of the clinical information at your physician’s fingertips during the exam room visit. But success in a pay-for-performance world (P4P) requires the care team to be more proactive.
A good EHR should have a worklisting system (or tools to create one) that allows schedulers to see which patients most need to get into the doctor’s office so they can call (or automatically email) them. Patients need to be hounded to get the care they need.
Mr Weider, it is time to get your prostate checked. It isn’t pleasant – but it is a lot better than late stage prostate cancer. This is the kind of care that procrastinators like me really need.
Candid CIO 
The HL7 EHR-S Functional Model standard has it covered under DC.2.2.2, “Support Consistent Healthcare Management of Patient Groups or Populations.” It has six conformance criteria, one of which says “The system SHALL provide the ability to identify patients eligible for healthcare management protocols based on criteria identified within the protocol”.
Its got to be pushy, in a gentle but unrelenting way.
I’d say that it’s not just success in a pay-for performance world(P4P) that requires this.
In fact, I’d hope that the success of your patients’ health depends on this too.
Too bad money seems to be driving this world.
Population Management requires the ability in import previous history from past EHR systems. Today’s population is much more mobile than previous generations.
Maybe EHR’s need to pump reminders into MYHealthRecord.com or just interface to MyBlog
In Wisconsin the population isn’t all that mobile. At Affinity we hold the relationship between a docyor and patient as the cornerstone of the care process.
Your personal physician should have the information needed to provide you the care that you need.