The passage of the Affordable Care Act sparked many innovative care delivery and payment reform models. One unique model that emerged from this trend was the accountable care organization (ACO). In this model, groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers voluntarily come together to deliver coordinated, high-quality care to patients. The organizations achieve…
Small physician-led Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) have shown success in reducing costs while improving quality. But they need more support to continue down that road, according to a new report. Those ACOs would benefit from more guidance and support from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), private insurers and other sources as they…
Despite interest in addressing social determinants of health (SDOH) to improve patient outcomes, little progress has been made in integrating social services with medical care. Even for accountable care organizations (ACOs) that have been early adopters in addressing social needs, significant difficulties have been experienced in this area. These findings were detailed in the February issue of Health…
Accountable Care Organizations who are at risk of owing money back to Medicare because they haven’t met spending targets on shared-risk beneficiaries now have more freedom to use telehealth. Under a guidance document released last month by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, ACOs participating in a Medicare Shared Savings Program that is under…
Accountable care organizations have major challenges integrating social services with medical care, including a lack of data on their patients’ social needs and the capabilities of community partners. That’s the finding of a new study published in the journal Health Affairs, based on qualitative data from 22 ACOs. “The ACOs in our sample frequently lacked data about several…
The Next Generation Accountability Care Organization Program appears to be on shaky ground as the Trump administration questions its capacity to generate savings and a potential replacement revs up. The five-year demonstration program will expire at the end of 2020 unless the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar decides to extend it or make…
Despite agreement that the social determinants of health (SDOH) can impact accountable care organization (ACO) success, many see challenges in integrating interventions into practice, according to a new study published in Health Affairs obtained ahead of print by journalists. Specifically, ACOs face challenges in collecting data about patients experiencing key SDOH, creating meaningful community health partnerships, and…
AMGA (American Medical Group Association) recently sent a letter to Congress outlining what it views as 2020’s top priorities for medical groups and health systems. Chief among the group’s recommendations was better claims data access for providers and patients in a value-based care world. Congress and the administration have made it clear that how healthcare is financed…
Long discussed, the concept of community health workers has rarely been evaluated in a formal way in terms of its potential effectiveness in communities. Now, a team of healthcare researchers has executed a study on the subject, which was published in the February issue of Health Affairs. The published article, entitled “Evidence-Based Community Health Worker Program Addresses…
Despite interest in addressing social determinants of health to improve patient outcomes, little progress has been made in integrating social services with medical care. We aimed to understand how health care providers with strong motivation (for example, operating under new payment models) and commitment (for example, early adopters) fared at addressing patients’ social needs. We…