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Multiple analyses have demonstrated that accountable care organizations (ACOs) reduce the use of skilled nursing facilities and other institutional post-acute care settings, and a new study may have identified a subtle culprit for the trend: specialist physicians.
ACOs with the highest proportion of specialist visits had demonstrably lower rates of hospital admissions, skilled nursing encounters, and emergency room visits, a team from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst found.
Conversely, those with the lowest concentration of specialist visits — and a greater proportion of primary care physician (PCP) visits — had the highest usage of SNFs, emergency rooms, and other costlier sites of care, the team determined in findings published last week in the journal JAMA Network Open.