By John DeGaspari
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 to announcement of its decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
Following a pre-conference workshop on Best Practices for Designing Accountable Care Financial Systems I asked its presenter, Daniel J. Marino, president and CEO of Health Directions, Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., what impact the Supreme Court decision, when it is announced, will have on ACO development. In his view, regardless of the decision, ACOs are a trend that is here to stay: provider organizations have already provided the momentum in that direction. ACOs make sense, he says, and there is no disagreement over the need to re-engineer care and tie it to costs.
In his presentation, Marino outlined seven steps to launching an ACO:
To be sure, launching an ACO is a complex undertaking with considerable upfront investment. Provider organizations have to build a strategy, manage their cost structures, and understand the cultural changes that are necessary to make ACOs possible. Strategies may vary according to an organization’s size and resources, he says, and it may be necessary to incorporate various components selectively when building an ACO.