CIHI’s Population Grouping Methodology (POP Grouper) builds clinical and demographic profiles for each person in a population. These profiles help predict the population’s health care needs and costs.
Overview of the methodology
The POP Grouper, launched in 2016, was developed by CIHI using Canadian clinical and cost data from a range of health care services to meet the needs of Canada’s health care systems.
The POP Grouper contains a case-mix classification that profiles each person in the population using person-level demographic and clinical information. These profiles are then used to help predict the population’s health care needs and costs. All persons in the population over a given time period, including healthy persons and persons who have not used the health system, are represented in the POP Grouper. Find out more about the POP Grouper, including its software and input data requirements:
Accessing the methodology
The POP Grouper product consists of methodology notes, computer software that applies the methodology, a user guide for running the computer software and a licence agreement outlining how the software can be used. The POP Grouper is updated as needed to reflect changes to Canada’s health care systems and tools used to collect health information. For more information, including how to access the methodology and client support, please write to casemix@cihi.ca.
Methodology in action
Since its inception in 2016, the POP Grouper has been used in most jurisdictions in Canada to support health system decision-making. Health system planners at the provincial/territorial, regional and facility levels can use the POP Grouper to
- Monitor population health and diseases across time and geography
- Predict future health care costs and use of health services to inform service and health human resources planning
- Identify, profile and better understand high-cost users
- Explore multi-morbidity and its impact on future service needs
- Explain variations in health care resource use by any segment imaginable, including age/sex, socio-demographic variations, geography and disease cohort
Find out more about the POP Grouper’s outputs and its potential applications:
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