Population Avoidable Days: A Novel Approach to an Old Problem.

Healthcare systems are struggling to keep pace with growing populations and their complex social/medical needs. Most believe that integrated care closer to home, not hospitals, is the answer, but this requires a shift in our mental models. In establishing a distributed health network for the Northern York and South Simcoe regions of Ontario, Canada, we realized the need for a measure that reflects the magnitude of the challenge ahead and the new thinking required to get there. Population avoidable days combines four commonly used measures of unnecessary hospital utilization into a single absolute value that can help achieve these objectives.