The Eight-Year Journey To Accountable Care

By Justin Barnes, co-chair of the national Accountable Care Community of Practice (ACCoP), chairman emeritus of the EHR Association, and former vice president at Greenway Medical Technologies

Now that the healthcare industry can work with clarity on care coordination strategies and programs, a new expansion of ACO models, trends in patient behavior and the companion issue of provider scope of practice have quickly emerged as critically-relevant spotlights.

And with a presidential political season upon us, mutual clarity on what the election returns could bring is also at hand based on conjecture that a GOP White House and/or Congress would attempt to counteract the Affordable Care Act. And here some historical perspective helps.

Simply put, even with the political leadership makeup potentially in flux this fall, there is strong bipartisan support for aligning payment and care delivery models with improving quality to create a smarter and sustainable healthcare system, backed by historical precedent.

For me and my colleagues in the trenches of pursuing fiscally sound care delivery nearly a decade ago, it is well remembered that the origins of accountable care reside within a 2004 HHS document entitled “The Decade of Health Information Technology: Delivering Consumer-centric and Informationrich Health Care.” This “Framework for Strategic Action” (as it is also known) was delivered to then-HHS Secretary and GOP-appointee Tommy Thompson. And it was delivered by the nation’s first National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Dr. David Brailer.

The document’s goals of introducing health IT solutions to clinical practices, electronically connecting clinicians, using “information tools” to personalize care and advance population health reporting followed an executive order calling for widespread adoption of interoperable EHRs within 10 years.

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