Clinical pharmacists are in an ideal position to manage multiple aspects of patient care within value-based care models. In 2015, Nova Southeastern University College of Pharmacy founded the Accountable Care Organization Research Network, Services, and Education (ACORN SEED), a team of pharmacy practice faculty dedicated to using innovative approaches to patient care while providing unique…
When primary care physician Dr. Karen Smith noticed that opioid abuse rates were skyrocketing in her community of Raeford, North Carolina, she decided to do something about it: She partnered with a behavioral health agency to roll out a medication-assisted treatment (MAT) program within the four walls of her practice. Here’s how it worked: Smith…
Physician-hospital integration among accountable care organizations (ACOs) has raised concern over impacts on prices and spending. However, characteristics of ACOs with greater integration between physicians and hospitals are unknown. We examined whether ACOs systematically differ by physician-hospital integration among 16 commercial ACOs operating in Massachusetts. Using claims data linked to information on physician affiliation, we…
Many other countries’ healthcare systems outperform ours for one simple reason: They place a much greater emphasis on primary care, which occupies the central place in their systems. “The evidence is that where you have more primary care physicians, where you coordinate care, and where you pay to keep people healthy, you get better outcomes…
A national primary-care physician association and an employer group have teamed up to develop a care model that aims to shift away from fee-for-service reimbursement. The American Academy of Family Physicians and National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions plan to leverage regional employer coalitions and physician networks to form a national primary-care model based on…
Primary care practices focus on the preventive care that keeps patients healthy. Many of them are small but punch above their weight in providing access to services in underserved communities. A series of new surveys by researchers at NYU have found that the city’s primary care practices have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic….
Patients receiving primary care outside of their defined accountable care organization (ACO) network drive up costs for ACOs, a recent study from Portland State University said. The Medicare Shared Savings program sparked the growth of ACOs. These payment models intend to reduce healthcare costs while improving patient care through care coordination among a network of participating providers. Those…
The medical assistant-only model for primary care staffing may be the most cost-effective for practices relying on fee-for-service revenue, but the model will not be able to support value-based care and other sophisticated revenue arrangements, Premier recently reported. In a new analysis of 2018 data from 257 family medicine and primary care practices, the healthcare improvement…
Advanced primary care boosts the savings rate and quality performance of accountable care organizations, research released this week says. Researchers found a symbiotic relationship between ACOs and advanced primary care models such as patient-centered medical homes, the report says. “Systems that already provided advanced primary care had a strong foundation on which to build an…
The Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) released its analysis of 2016 health spending for a group of commercial insurers last month. The report is a trove of information that, like all good analyses, suggests more questions than it answers. Buried in the report—in figure 15—is an alarming trend that should rise to the top of…