Many of the companies in the health-care system are rethinking business strategies, and Inova Health System, the Northern Virginia hospital giant, is no exception.

Last June, Inova announced a venture with insurance titan Aetna one of the first such partnerships in the country between entities usually economically at odds to deliver care more affordably.

Teaming up with an insurance business brings challenges for a traditional hospital system: Rather than just caring for sick patients, the company sees itself as managing peoples overall health and dealing with all the complications of that task.

To help chart its path, Inova is hiring a director of health-care economics to build a team of financial analysts that can translate patient data into optimized use of resources.

The Washington Post spoke with Glenn Lohrmann, Inovas chief financial officer for population health services, about where the industry is headed. The interview was edited for brevity.

Q. Why does a hospital system need an economics department?

A. There is so much pressure on health-care organizations these days because were supposed to provide the best care possible but do it in an efficient manner.

That means there has to be much more of a focus on prevention and wellness. Thats the transition thats been in place for 30 years, and its picked up steam with the Affordable Care Act.

What sort of people do you need to hire to conduct this sort of analysis?

For this position, we need someone who is strong with their data manipulation abilities the data sets we are dealing with are just huge but we also need someone who understands health-care claims, including how they are coded as presented from providers. They dont need to know everything the way a doctor would, but they do need to be able to intelligently converse with the people who are processing claims.

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On the heels of a shift in its business model, Inova invests in analytics