FEATURED ARTICLES: ACO
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‘Tis The Season For The Gift Of Voice Recognition In Healthcare IT
Porter Research talks with Nuance’s Nic van Terheyden, M.D., about the possibilities voice-recognition holds for advancing patient engagement and improving the bottom line.
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Cleveland Clinic’s Plan For Patient Engagement10/11/2013
Patient engagement is a key element for meeting Meaningful Use, Cleveland Clinic striving to accomplish both By Katie Wike, contributing writer
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Patient-Centered Transplant Care — A Guiding Light For Accountable Care2/13/2012The identification, surgical intervention, management and lifetime clinical maintenance of transplant recipients are a case study of the needs around chronic disease management and collaborative care. By Paul Markham, MBA
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Community Health Centers - A Care Coordination Model On The Forefront Of Delivery Reform5/1/2012
While CHCs make up less than five percent of the ambulatory clinics in the United States, they are at the forefront of technology adoption, care coordination and population health management as a result of an emphasis on quality improvement in healthcare.
- Provider Perspectives On The Future Of Healthcare
- Are ACO And PCMH Programs Beneficial To Providers?
- A Big Step Forward For Stage 2 Meaningful Use
- Does Big Data Worry You? Not If You Can Gain Relevance
- Readmission Reduction Program Unfair To Hospitals Treating Low-Income Patients?
- Secure Healthcare Messaging Solution
CASE STUDIES & WHITE PAPERS
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Where Information And Care Meet: Secure Mobile Healthcare Solutions That Drive Care Coordination11/10/2011Mobile technology has long reached critical mass in the United States. Four of five American adults, or 83 percent, own some kind of cell phone, according to the August 2011 report, Americans and Their Cell Phones, by the Pew Research Center’s Pew Internet and American Life Project.
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White Paper: Providing Accountability: Accountable Care Concepts For Healthcare Providers4/5/2011Healthcare expenditures in the United States totaled $2.5 trillion in 2009. Researchers estimate as much as 30 percent of those costs, or $750 billion, may have been due to overuse, underuse, misuse, and/or inefficiencies of healthcare services. By RelayHealth
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Brigham And Women’s Hospital Saves Over $9M, Improves MT Productivity 123%4/16/2012A 730-bed nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a founding member of Partners Healthcare System, Brigham and Women’s Hospital is a world leader in patient care and research. The organization wanted to upgrade its existing transcription process to eliminate multiple medical transcription serviceorganizations (MTSOs) contracts and to address increasingly complex technical and billing infrastructures. The expensive, slow system hampered clinicians’ ability to maximize use of transcribed reports to diagnose and plan patient care.
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An Israeli Model For Coordinated Care4/5/2012This white paper illustrates how Maccabi Healthcare Services, the second largest health maintenance organization in Israel, aligned the proper incentives, processes, and IT assets to deliver coordinated care to more than 1.9 million members.
FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK
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The Problem With Consumerism In Healthcare
Many industry leaders championed a free market approach to healthcare during the 12th Annual World Health Care Congress last week. Here are a few key reasons why I don’t think this model is “the fix” our industry so desperately needs.
ABOUT ACCOUNTABLE CARE ORGANIZATIONS (ACO)
An Accountable Care Organization (ACO) utilizes a payment and care delivery system that bases payments to providers on quality metrics and seeks to reduce the total cost of care for a certain population of patients. ACOs use a range of payment models and consist of groups of coordinated healthcare providers that provide care to groups of patients. ACOs are accountable to a third-party payer and the group of patients for the appropriateness, quality, and efficiency of the health services they provide.
In 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) set forth initial guidelines for ACOs to be created under the Medicare Shared Savings Program. These guidelines contained all necessary steps required for a physician, health care provider, or hospital to voluntarily participate in ACOs.
The quality measures used to evaluate an ACO's performance as defined by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) fall into five domains. These domains are patient/caregiver experience, care coordination, patient safety, preventative health, and at-risk population/frail elderly health.
The three stakeholders in an ACO are the providers, payers, and patients. Providers are a network of hospitals, physicians, and other healthcare professionals. The primary payer is the federal government, Medicare, but also includes other payers such as private insurances or employee-purchased insurance. The patient population of an ACO will primarily consist of Medicare beneficiaries, but in larger ACOs can also include those who are homeless and uninsured.
FEATURED NEWS
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ACOs Face Interoperability Barriers2/8/2016
According to a new report, a lack of out-of-network interoperability is the biggest obstacle facing ACOs today. By Katie Wike, contributing writer
ACO NEWS ARTICLES
- Upcoming Webinar: Data-Driven Care: The Key To Accountable Care Delivery From A Physician Group Perspective
- WEDI Releases Guide On HIPAA Transactions Requiring ICD-10 Codes
- Automated Quality Reporting Through EHRs Can Result In Significant Efficiencies And Care Improvements
- CMS Releases Updated Data On EHR Adoption
- West Florida ACO Chooses Sandlot Solutions As Partner In Patient Health Information Management