National Rural Accountable Care Consortium Adds 5 ACOs

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

There are now 30 rural health systems participating in six ACOs across nine U.S. states.

The National Rural Accountable Care Consortium has announced it has formed five additional ACOs for 2015 for rural healthcare providers. According to a blog post, 52 entities, including 28 rural and critical access hospitals, 42 rural health clinics, 12 federally qualified health centers, and 9 private physician practices in 30 rural health systems across 9 states, were able to use the Consortium’s collaborative model to afford and qualify for the Medicare Shared Savings Program.

The model services 65,000 attributed Medicare beneficiaries from Texas, California, Washington, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Oregon, Illinois, and Michigan, under the care of 1,300 clinicians. The Consortium’s newest ACOs include National Rural ACO, Reid ACO, Suburban Health ACO, American Rural ACO, Northwest Rural ACO, and National Rural ACO II.

Among the Consortium’s comprehensive services are claims data access and analysis, evidence-based medicine leadership, care coordination coaching, and governance, legal, and compliance services.

 The Consortium's unique model of collaboration is the first of its kind to enable rural providers to receive higher reimbursement for improving the care they deliver, Tim Putnam, CEO of Margaret Mary Hospital in Batesville, IN and board chair for the first National Rural ACO, said in a press release.  We can access the same type of powerful data, waivers, and programs that urban ACO's can for about the same cost as it would be to hire one person to figure out how to get into the program.

The Consortium provides comprehensive services including claims data access and analysis, evidence-based medicine leadership, care coordination coaching and the governance, legal and compliance services needed to succeed.