Accountable Care Organization, Healthcare Big Data, Healthcare Portal, and ACO Implementation Resources Accountable Care Organization, Healthcare Big Data, Healthcare Portal, and ACO Implementation Resources

FEATURED ARTICLES: ACO

  • How Telehealth Is Driving Engagement And Shaping The ACO Model Of The Future

    The U.S. healthcare industry is rapidly transitioning beyond the traditional focus of treating individual patients’ physical conditions. Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and similar arrangements are leading the way, structured specifically to reward progress toward achieving the Triple Aim of improving the patient experience, improving the health of populations and reducing the cost of care. Fully addressing these dynamics By Derek Richards, PhD, director of clinical research and innovation, SilverCloud Health

  • Medicare ACO Lessons For Medicaid
    6/30/2014

    Aligning approaches to Accountable Care across Medicare and Medicaid. By Christine Kern, contributing writer

  • New Population Health Decision System For ACOs Uncovers The Hidden Risks
    3/10/2016

    One of the biggest challenges for Accountable Care Organizations is effective deployment of patient care resources. To succeed requires an in-depth understanding of patient risk, which is often difficult to assess. The reason for this is that most risk analysis systems rely on claims data, which can only tell who, in the past, has been a high-use patient. What that data can’t do is tell you who is on the verge of developing a serious condition.

  • State Of The Union Address Stresses ACA Is Key To Economic Recovery
    1/21/2015

    Calling the ACA ‘part of the fabric of middle-class recovery,’ Obama promises to veto changes to law. By Christine Kern, contributing writer

CASE STUDIES & WHITE PAPERS

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.

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