The American Medical Group Association (AMGA) recommended several steps regarding accountable care organization (ACO) financial risk advancement in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) in a letter to CMS. CMS’ decision to defer the automatic advancement of ACOs in the MSSP and allow ACOs to remain in their current risk level of the BASIC Track’s…
Doctors in accountable care organizations (ACOs), and those thinking of starting or joining one, have had their hands full keeping up with changes in the way Medicare is administering them. ACOs are groups of doctors, hospitals, and/or other healthcare providers that work together with a goal of providing better care at lower cost. As part…
The US health care system is increasingly moving towards value-based care to promote improved health outcomes for Americans. This can be seen across Medicare Advantage Plans (MA Plans), Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), and Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers (CCBHC), among others. This movement also demands a transformation of reimbursement models to value-based contracting, with a…
Accountable care organization (ACO) growth has hit a snag again, with the COVID-19 pandemic impacting the number of ACOs in public and private contracts, according to a new analysis. The analysis published in the Health Affairs blog found that ACO growth has plateaued over the last couple of years, starting in 2019 when CMS introduced…
Nationwide, accountable care organizations report that it’s becoming more challenging to do business and the stakes are higher than ever. They are taking on more financial risk as CMS shifts Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs into downside or two-sided risk tracks. Meanwhile, patients are aging, chronic conditions are on the rise and more specialists are…
The current ACO model is, indeed, challenging. Blending both provider and payer functions is fraught with conflict. But the provider-directed model was supposed to function closer to the actual delivery of care, and thereby be more capable of generating change. Instead, ACOs have deployed health plan strategies that were implemented decades ago, which failed to…
During the past year, the pandemic strained the entire health care system. Many health care providers experienced significant disruptions with reductions in use and lower revenue. Some providers were able to weather the crisis by relying on the organizational competencies they had built for value-based payment models. Providers in more advanced payment models had more…
The rise of value-based care has put a greater focus on costs and quality of all health care providers. While accountable care organizations (ACOs) have gotten a bad rap in the skilled nursing industry in the past, joining forces with these groups, which consist of groups of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers, remains a…
Value-based care has become a buzzword over the past decade with early experiments in Massachusetts, followed by creating Medicare accountable care organizations (ACOs) as part of the Affordable Care Act. As commercial insurers jumped onto this bandwagon, most providers became familiar with the concepts of gainsharing, upside and downside risk, and bundled payments. Much of…
Over the past decade, adoption of value-based payment (VBP) models has increased substantially. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation’s has launched multiple new models since its authorization, commercial payers have structured almost one-third of their payments as alternative payment models (APMs), and state Medicaid programs have increasingly included payment reforms in their waivers and…