Concerns Expressed Over Proposed ACO Rule

ACO Performance Measures. CHIME also expressed concern over the proposed use of 65 performance measures in the first year of the ACO program. “We think this is way too high,” says canner, adding that some of the measures don’t match up to meaningful use and other programs. “We want to make this work, but we don’t want to have make-work, requiring so much more from the provider that you lose sight of your main objectives,” she says.

As an alternative, CHIME recommends that CMS seek to align performance measures across similar or related programs and outline a more consistent approach for measuring quality improvement for the parts of other programs that overlap.

HIE and Other Technological Assumptions. Finally, CHIME urges CMS to scale back expectations for the use of health information exchange (HIE) to give healthcare organizations more time to enter HIE organizations and gain experience with the use of exchanged patient data in care delivery.

The ACO rules “are fairly prescriptive on technology,” Canner says. As an alternative, she says the decision on how to meet data collection and reporting requirements should lie with the ACOs, because it relates to their internal priorities. “Let them make the decision on what kind of technology they need to use.”