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Reading through our past coverage of the Medicare accountable care organization (ACO) program can produce a lot of confusion—like these two seemingly conflicting headlines:
- Medicare ACOs – The Enrollment & The Savings Are Increasing
- ACOs Shared Savings Raised Federal Costs By $384 Million Between 2013 & 2016
The first headline is related to recently released data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which showed that in 2016, ACOs across all Medicare ACO programs generated $784 billion in savings—the highest amount we’d seen yet. There are 618 Medicare ACOs, covering 8.4 million beneficiaries (14.7% of the Medicare population), and the four-year savings reported were $1.2 billion.