Patent ID: 8489420

Claim:
A method of optimizing healthcare services consumption, including the steps of: assessing a healthcare situation of a population of patients, the assessing step including the steps of identifying a plurality of geographic regions, associating with a computer an address of each patient with a geographic region, associating with the computer a location of each provider with a geographic region, and aggregating with the computer the geographic regions into a geographic zone; performing a computerized analysis of information about the health of the patients and stored in a database to identify a first group of patients likely to have a higher consumption of healthcare services than other patients in the population; accessing a computerized analysis of information about the practices of the providers in the geographic zone that identifies a first group of providers who provide high quality, cost efficient healthcare services; and initiating a communication with a patient who has obtained services from a provider who is not in the first group of providers before the patient consumes additional services from the provider to urge the patient to obtain the additional services from a provider in the first group of providers.