By Gregg A. Masters, MPH
Just concluded at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, a stone’s throw away from my high school, ‘Beverly’ (yup, the real 90210), I attended the 3rd National ACO Congress. Co-produced by the the California Association of Physician Groups, CAPG, and the Integrated Healthcare Association, IHA. This truly represented a gathering of the best and brightest health policy wonks, entrepreneurs and innovators in the accountable care industry. Both CAPG and IHA include many of the integrated delivery systems and risk savvy medical groups who have ‘walked the talk’ and done most of the heavy lifting in making managed competition actually work.
There is so much to compile and reflect upon, for now I merely want to make notice of 
this recap to be available shortly. Perhaps the best visual representation that captures the key take away (if not warning to the collective industry) was proffered by this question in Kaiser Permanente’s Jay Crosson, MD’s keynote.
This is somewhat reminiscent of actor Ed Harris’ noteworthy cinematic ‘channeling’ of Gene Kranz’s energy (though Kranz did not actually say this during the heat of the crisis) and leadership to his team of engineers on Apollo 13:
Failure is not an option…
I seriously doubt the private sector has another legitimate, ‘hey we can do this…’ bite at the apple, before Government steps in and puts an end to our collective public/private failure to remedy the root cause of the ‘dis-ease’.
acowatch.me 