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Rethinking Population Health: Why Chronic Disease Management Isn't Enough (And What Actually Works)
By: Solomon Banjo, Executive Director, Client and Market Insights
It’s been over a decade since the first ACOs were formed, promising a shift toward value-based care. But here we are, with true proactive care still feeling out of reach.
Why? Because population health has been too focused on chronic disease management, wellness, and prevention. These types of programs are important, but they lack the immediate impact needed to build momentum for long-term change.
It’s hard to create generational change in a system with a two-year memory and pressures on the bottom line
For all the talk about shifting to value-based care, legacy population health models continue to struggle for two key reasons:
- The Payment Model Problem: Yes, prevention is invaluable—but most payment models don’t reward long-term thinking. Private payers typically focus on an 18-month window, while even government programs operate on a 4-year cycle. The result? Prevention efforts often fail to gain traction because their value takes too long to materialize within these short-term financial frameworks.
- The Health System Reality: Most health systems are still wired for acute care delivery, and investments in prevention take time to show results. But in a world where 40% of health systems are operating in the red, immediate financial pressures take priority. “No margin, no mission” isn’t just a saying—it’s the reality shaping decisions.
So, what’s the path forward? Of course, we need to tackle social determinants of health and invest in long-term wellness. But legacy models skip over the intermediate opportunities to deliver proactive care—the kind that drives near-term impact while building the foundation for sustainable transformation.
It’s not about choosing between short-term wins and long-term goals. We need both.
Shifting to a framework for proactive care that compounds value and creates transformation
At Eon, we believe the most effective way to enable true proactive care isn’t just through long-term prevention—but by addressing the millions of patients each year with early developments that could potentially lead to cancer or cardiovascular disease. Data suggests that 70% of these patients don’t receive care until their conditions become severe, when treatment is more expensive and survival rates are lower.
That’s why our approach to proactive care delivers measurable value to health systems in months, not decades—helping them:
- Catch the earliest signs of catastrophic illness before it’s too late
- Drive down costs by treating conditions earlier
- Build financial sustainability for long-term innovation
And this isn’t just theory. We’ve seen it work. Partnering with 1,000+ facilities, we’ve impacted 1.6 million patient lives and counting.
For example, the median cost to care for 100 lung cancer patients in California over the first year of treatment is roughly $13,838,620 based on the statewide distribution of 28% of patients in the early stage of disease and 72% of patients in late stage, and modeling using cost data from peer-reviewed research. The table below shows the difference in the total cost of care to treat 100 patients in California versus two Eon clients who have seen significant improvements in stage shift. Not only are these Eon clients reducing the total cost of care, but they are generating significant new revenue streams for their health systems–funds that can be reinvested to expand programs and improve patient outcomes.
Most importantly, they are dramatically improving the physical and financial health of their patients by catching lung cancer, the #1 cancer killer, early.
Eon is here to unlock the patient impact and program growth hidden in your data
It's time to challenge the conventional wisdom around what population health means and Eon is the solution to help you grow your programs today and evolve for tomorrow. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the best time to prevent a delayed diagnosis is today. Let’s get to work!