Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) aim to enhance healthcare value by managing costs and improving quality through coordinated, patient-centered care across various providers. The ACO model emphasizes five key elements: coordinated care, patient-centered care, evidence-based practices, health information technology, and value-based payment. By integrating these elements, ACOs can reduce inefficiencies, improve patient outcomes, and foster accountability in healthcare delivery.

1. ACOs Are Defining the Problem. Should
Pharma Reposition its Solutions?
Written by Anthony D. Slonim, MD, DrPH, Executive Vice President and Chief
Medical Officer, Barnabas Health. Executive Director, Barnabas Health ACO-
North, West Orange, New Jersey
October 1, 2012
www.cmrinstitute.org

2. What are ACOs?
• Aim to improve the value of healthcare by controlling the
healthcare costs and improving quality
• Focus on the total patient
• Aim to improve coordination of healthcare across an entire
continuum of providers
• Accept responsibility for managing the care of a
population of patients, and for both the clinical and
financial outcomes of that care

5. Five Key Elements of the ACO Model
• Coordinated care
• Patient-Centered care
• Evidence-based & outcomes-based care
• HIT (Health Information Technology) enabled care
• Value-based payment for care

6. Benefits of Coordinated Care
• Eliminate waste and inefficiencies (eg, by avoiding duplicated tests)
• Decrease adverse events (eg, by lessening the likelihood of drug
interactions from multiple prescribers)
• Establish accountability (by defining who is responsible for each
aspect of patient care and increasing each caregiver’s awareness of
how that impacts all other aspects of care)
• Facilitate patient transitions from one care-setting to another (eg,
from hospital to rehabilitation center to home)

7. Benefits of Patient-Centered Care
• Improve care coordination
• Help to more meaningfully define goals and desired
outcomes, so success can be measured
• Help increase the chances for successful outcomes— by
making the patient an active partner in the
treatment/management process
• Better respond to more-informed, more discerning
patient-consumers

8. Evidence-based & outcomes-based care:
• Enables coordination of care— by providing a basis for
consensus as to goals and treatment-paths
• Enables improvement of care —by providing a basis for
evaluating current practices and formulating best practices
• Enables value-based reimbursement of care— by
providing quality and cost-effectiveness measures

9. Health Information Technology Enables:
• Coordination of care
• Active involvement of the patient
• Tracking of patient outcomes
• Adherence to best practices and avoidance of adverse
event
• Measurement and analysis of outcomes and costs across a
patient population
• Tracking of outcomes and treatment costs

10. Value-based care:
• Rewards coordination of care
• Rewards improvements in quality and cost-effectiveness of
care
• Enables a different perspective for assigning value to
treatment alternatives

11. For more information or to download the
white paper:
Please visit www.cmrinstitute.org