MaineHealth Accountable Care Organization is a network of 10 hospitals, 378 practice locations and 1,600 healthcare providers dedicated to measurably increasing the quality and decreasing the cost of care for 380,000 patients in Maine and northern New Hampshire. MaineHealth’s coverage area has one of the highest emergency department utilization rates in the country. So the…
In the wake of the pandemic, health systems have been forced to pivot quickly to redeploy personnel and other resources to support front-line clinicians and reach out to vulnerable populations. During a recent panel discussion, three executives discussed how their experience with value-based care models made them nimble enough to respond. Speaking during the spring…
Among the industry experts who spoke with Healthcare Innovation in participating in the development of this year’s Ten Transformative Trends cover story package in the May/June issue of the publication was Christopher Kerns, vice president for executive insights for Advisory Board, a Washington, D.C.-based research division of the Minneapolis-based Optum. Editor-in-Chief Mark Hagland interviewed Kearns for the “ACOs…
Southwestern Health Resources Accountable Care Network, a major healthcare system in Texas, made a large investment in data collection and analysis as part of its participation in the Next Generation Accountable Care Organization program. That investment is now helping the system learn more about the spread of COVID-19 in its region. “We work with provider…
With Medicare spending growing at an unsustainable rate, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission is advising Congress to accelerate the transition to value-based payment, using accountable care organizations (ACOs) and Medicare Advantage as vehicles. However, both models will need to be improved to realize potential savings, the Commission stated. “While these programs may be capable of…
DOWNLOAD SLIDES While providers work diligently to treat COVID-19 patients now, ACO leaders must prepare for the new contract realities of tomorrow. Changes in risk-based contracting make your ACO’s data more important than ever before. The second webinar in our “Getting Your ACO Through the Crisis” series explores COVID-19’s cost and contracting impacts on…
Due to the coronavirus, telehealth utilization is soaring. Some payers have seen their telehealth utilization increase by 50 times their typical levels within a couple of months. Payers and providers have clearly signaled that they do not want this upward trend to be restricted to the crisis but to extend beyond the pandemic. At the Value-Based Care…
Kidney Care Choices (KCC) is a voluntary alternative payment model built on top of the Comprehensive End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Care (CEC) model structure. The goal of the KCC model is to encourage nephrologists, dialysis facilities, and ESRD healthcare practices to focus on the total care of their patients, and incentivize kidney transplants for chronic…
In its June report, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) said the program needs to move more quickly away from fee-for-service (FFS) payments. “The commission has made an assertion that the progress towards value-based payment throughout the Medicare program needs to accelerate and more of the program needs to be detached from straight fee-for-service payments,” said…
Given current events I think many physicians—me included—are going through critical self assessments of our approach to vulnerable patient care. We interact with new people daily and have to quickly make decisions about their care that can have lasting implications. Yes, we are supposed to be helping them, but what assumptions—our implicit bias—do we carry…