Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs)

CMS Announces 15 Advanced Payment Model ACOs

July 18, 2012    
news
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) have announced 15 participants of the Advanced Payment Model ACO period, which began earlier this month. The same 15 had been announced for the the Medicare Shared Savings Program earlier this month. The Advanced Payment Model is designed for physician-based and rural providers who have come together voluntarily to give coordinated high quality care to the Medicare patients they serve.

D.C. Report: ACO Numbers Rise, HHS Holding ACA Implementation Forums

July 17, 2012     Jeff Smith, Assistant Director of Advocacy at CHIME
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CMS can't get enough of ACOs, so they announced another round this week. As of July 1, 1.2 million Medicare beneficiaries will be treated by providers participating in ACOs. 154 ACOs are now operational, including the 32 following the Pioneer ACO Model under CMS's Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (Innovation Center).

ACOs: Premier's Blair Childs Sees Healthcare Payment's Future

July 13, 2012     Mark Hagland
article
The nationwide health alliance's senior public policy executive looks at the emerging landscape around accountable care arrangements, and sees an environment with far greater clarity and certainty for the developers of evolving payment and care delivery innovations going forward.

Physicians at Akron's Summa Health Move Forward Boldly on an ACO

July 13, 2012     Mark Hagland
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Rodney Ison, M.D., the chairman of the NewHealth Collaborative, says the first essential in developing an accountable care organization is for the process to be physician-driven. The second? Lots of information technology.

Boy, Were the "Experts" Wrong This Time

July 10, 2012     Mark Hagland
blog
The new accountable care organizations that joined Medicare's ACO program this week represent the full spectrum of patient care organizations—and markets—in healthcare today. And those naysayers who believed that only one type of healthcare alliance was possible under that program have been proven pretty much wrong.

BREAKING NEWS: HHS Announces ACO Cohort

July 9, 2012    
news
The 89 accountable care organizations announced today, when combined with the 32 ACOs participating in the Pioneer ACO Model program, bring to 154 the number of organizations participating in Medicare Shared Savings to date. The organizations involved represent a diverse range of hospital- and medical group-based collaboratives.

Intermountain's Bold Population Health Move

July 9, 2012     Mark Hagland
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With the aid of a federal contract, Intermountain Healthcare leaders are pushing ahead to reframe the terms of care delivery to patients, particularly those with chronic illnesses. Intermountain's Lucy Savitz, Ph.D., shares some early learnings with Healthcare Informatics.

HFMA Live: Accountable Care Financial Systems

June 25, 2012     John DeGaspari
blog
This year’s annual conference of the Healthcare Financial Management Association in Las Vegas is an great example of interesting timing, because it may well coincide with the Supreme Court’s expected announcement of its decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.

ACOs Rising from the Private Sector, Report Finds

June 18, 2012    
news
A new research report from healthcare business company, Leavitt Partners, found that the number of accountable care organizations (ACOs) across the U.S. have grown 38 percent over the past six months. The report, "Growth and Dispersion of Accountable Care Organizations," found that 221 ACOs have been identified across 45 states and the District of Columbia, and ACO activity in the private sector outnumbers the government sector by a factor of four to one. In November of 2011, there were 160 ACOs in 40 states,

Payer Action in the ACO Market: Part 2

June 11, 2012     Jennifer Prestigiacomo
blog
In a look at what payers are doing to shake up the ACO market, I blogged on Friday about how Cigna was collaborating with its medical group partners to reduce unnecessary medical costs. In this blog I want to point out some other recent acquisitions in the space that might be setting the stage for more to come, as well as share some interesting perspectives from those watching this space carefully.

Payer Action in the ACO Market: Part 1

June 8, 2012     Jennifer Prestigiacomo
blog
How long will it take to incorporate clinical data in payer-led ACOs and will most of these efforts focus on reducing medical costs like unnecessary testing, rather than other population health elements like reduced readmissions and chronic disease management? I’ll take a look at what payer action is happening now in the ACO market in a two-part blog series.

ACOs: No Easy Solutions for IT Implementation

June 6, 2012     Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
Providers are facing myriad challenges developing accountable care organizations (ACOs), finding no easy solutions on the market today to scale and successfully perform the population health management necessary for these complex risk arrangements, said IT industry leaders who participated in a panel that tackled the strategic IT issues surrounding ACOs at the Healthcare Informatics Executive Summit in May.
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