Moving Forward With Accountable Care Organizations

Accountable Care Organizations: Looking Back and Moving Forward

ust three or four years ago, accountable care organizations (ACOs) were being compared to the mythical unicorn – an intriguing idea, but one impossible to see in reality. Today, ACOs are very much a reality, with roughly 750 in operation – for Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial populations – serving 23.5 million people across the United States.1 ACOs are designed to achieve the Triple Aim of be...

A cautious path forward on accountable care organizations.

SPURRING THE CREATION OF ACCOUNTABLE CARE ORganizations (ACOs) was a signature initiative in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA). To achieve potential efficiencies by having health care delivery coordinated by multiple health care entities (eg, hospitals, physician groups, clinics, health care systems), the act invites such entities to integrate in ACOs and instructs ...

Fostering accountable health care: moving forward in medicare.

To succeed, health care reform must slow spending growth while improving quality. We propose a new approach to help achieve more integrated and efficient care by fostering local organizational accountability for quality and costs through performance measurement and "shared savings" payment reform. The approach is practical and feasible: it is voluntary for providers, builds on current referral ...

Accountable care organizations.

Accountable care organizations.