There’s a lot that goes into making an ACO successful. Not the least of which is choosing the best solutions to help ACOs achieve physician engagement. In that regard, our primary objective at ACOExhibitHall.com (ACOEH) is to help ACO decision makers find the best solutions available to meet their operational needs.
A recent Medical Economics article titled, “How Successful ACOs Treat Their Physicians,” reported on research by HHS’s Office of Inspector General regarding areas in which the top 20 Medicare ACOs excel. In response, we conducted a survey of our own vendor clients asking them to confirm which of these areas were among their core competencies.
Below are the results of the survey. Each item contains links to our respective vendors’ exhibit booths (listed in random order, not by rating or priority). According to the Medical Economics article, successful ACOs do five things for their physicians:
- Recruit physicians with a commitment to ACO goals. Good ACOs:
- Have experience meeting quality metrics and participating in alternative payment models.
- Exhibit booth links:
- Run practices that are recognized as patient-centered medical homes
- Exhibit booth links:
- Are committed to using electronic health records, sharing data and improving care coordination strategies.
- Exhibit booth links:
- Provide data for physicians. Good ACOs:
- Provide physicians with customized data to inform them about their practices performance and referral practices, especially in regards to the cost of services.
- Exhibit booth links:
- Provide individual physicians with regular spending and utilization reports. For example one ACO provides data on the number of patients who visited the ED, in an effort to reduce avoidable visits.
- Exhibit booth links:
- Provide comparisons between physicians on their performance relative to their peers, including claims data
- Exhibit booth links:
- Provide data on specialist, both inside and outside the ACO, to help physicians make informed referrals that take into account quality and cost. Some ACOs develop a list of preferred specialist and share it with their primary care doctors.
- Exhibit booth links:
- Highlight quality measure and gaps in care
- Provide physicians with regular “report cards” about their performance on quality measure and any gaps in care, including information about patients overdue for preventive services such as cancer screenings.
- Exhibit booth links:
- Encourage the scheduling of annual wellness visits to address gaps in care.
- Exhibit booth links:
- Help physicians, to the best of the ACOs ability, stay up-to-date on frequently changing quality measures.
- Exhibit booth links:
- Redesign office workflows
- Good ACOs provide physician practices with advice and help designing the most efficient office workflow possible.
- Exhibit booth links:
- Some ACOs integrated workflows into their practices’ EHR systems. For example one ACO provides a dashboard that shows which patients need screenings.
- Exhibit booth links:
- Provide administrative and clinical support
- HIgh-performing ACOs often provide support staff to physician practices to help with appointment scheduling and refill requests
- Exhibit booth links:
- Some ACOs provide clinical support in the form of performing preventive health screenings and creating patient summary reports before patients even see their physicians.
- Exhibit booth links:
Of course this is not an exhaustive list of needs/services that ACOs require. In a subsequent article, we will cover more areas from the HHS’s Office of Inspector General report. Until then, visit ACOExhibitHall.com today for a variety of other solutions, and browse through our impressive collection of vetted vendors. If you still can’t find what you are looking for, contact us directly and we will be glad to help.