Some believe that an ACO’s leadership structure predicts its success. They point to differing savings results for physician-led versus hospital-led ACO shared savings models (MSSPs) to make their case. In particular, they make the argument that future Value-Based Care (VBC) policies should benefit the growth of successful physician-led ACOs, protecting them from policies that force…
Groups representing doctors, hospitals, and accountable care organizations (ACOs) are pushing back on changes to quality reporting rules for Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) ACOs that were finalized under the Trump administration. “We have significant concerns about the MSSP quality policies finalized at the very end of 2020,” a group of 11 healthcare organizations, including…
A lot has happened in health care since 2012, when final rules permitted provider-organized ACOs to be the driving force of Value-Based Care under the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA). As we pass the ACA’s eleventh anniversary, a dwindling number of Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) ACOs are entering a new phase marked by higher…
The goal of the value movement is to incentivize providers to move away from the traditional fee-for-service model and provide coordinated care for patients with an eye toward improving quality and reducing cost. One key mechanism to achieve this goal is accountable care organization (ACO) models that—because they are offered along a continuum of varying…
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has released a guide showing which Medicare Shared Savings Program tracks for 2019 qualify as an alternative payment model or advanced APM under the Quality Payment Program. The guide also explains whether eligible clinicians participating in an MSSP accountable care organization are eligible for the Merit-based Incentive Payment System APM…
Physician-group accountable care organizations (ACOs) are not only more likely than hospital-integrated ACOs to be associated with savings in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), but their savings grew over 3 years, according to research published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Past research has shown that physician-led ACOs are more successful. The…
As described in our previous post, the MSSP saw for the first time a net savings for Medicare as calculated based on actual payments to ACOs (including bonuses) versus their benchmarks. The continuing trend of increasing net savings relative to benchmarks is consistent with a similar trend toward greater savings in “counterfactual” analyses that show…
As in previous years, MSSP ACOs showed strong performance on quality of care measures. But many of the proposed reforms in the program center on whether a redesign could increase the modest savings that have been estimated by the Medicare actuaries and other researchers in the program to date. In this, the first post of…
New analysis from Avalere finds that accountable care organizations (ACOs) in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) achieve higher savings for Medicare the longer they are in the program. ACOs in the MSSP for 4 or more years were responsible for nearly all of the program’s previously reported $314 million in savings in 2017, the…
Something really quite extraordinary happened this week: NAACOS, the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Accountable Care Organizations, published, in the august journal Health Affairs, a study based on research that NAACOS leaders had commissioned from Dobson DaVanzo & Associates, a healthcare economics consulting firm. And, as Healthcare Informatics Managing Editor Rajiv Leventhal noted in his…