2. ACOs
• More than half of the US population resides within
the vicinity of an Accountable Care Organization
(ACO), a healthcare delivery model in which a group
of providers are accountable for the cost and quality
of care for a specific number of patients
• The network of ACOs is by no means a measure of
their success
• ACOs are trying to promote a uniform payment
structure using the Medicare quality metrics as the
baseline, but have largely been unsuccessful because
of lack of incentives and an effective standard
3. ACOs
• Additional funding is required to test value-based
measures for ACO contracts which the federal
government can help with
• Furthermore, collection and aggregation of under-65
claims data should be mandated or encouraged
• While Medicare data is readily available for tracking
the impact of ACO formation and performance, there
is virtually no method to calculate the impact of the
commercially insured and Medicaid populations
• Less than a dozen states have all-payer claims
databases and very few of them report on total cost
of care
4. Formation of ACOs
• Formation of ACOs will have different effects on care,
prices and spending across markets
• Without clear information on outcomes and costs,
consumers will have no way to assess value and it
will be impossible to evaluate ACO implementation
on a regional or national level
• The importance of practice and accurate
measurement of ACO performance cannot be
overstated
• We need better measures and need to know what is
happening beyond Medicare
5. Read more on blog.curemd.com
• To read more on this topic, visit:
• http://blog.curemd.com/what-matters-for-acos/
