Population health management (PHM) is in its early stages of maturity, suffering from inconsistent definitions and understanding, overhyped by vendors and ill-defined by the industry. Healthcare IT vendors are labeling themselves with this new and popular term, quite often simply re-branding their old-school, fee-for-service, and encounter-based analytic solutions. Even the analysts —KLAS, Chilmark, IDC, and others—are also having a difficult time classifying the market. In this paper, I identify and define 12 criteria that any health system will want to consider in evaluating population health management companies. The reality of the market is that there is no single vendor that can provide a complete PHM solution today. However there are a group of vendors that provide a subset of capabilities that are certainly useful for the next three years. In this paper, I discuss the criteria and try my best to share an unbiased evaluation of sample of the PHM companies in this space.