The ACO Narrative: ‘Accountable Care 2.0 is a Journey, Not a Program’ or ‘ObamaCare is Toast’?

Earlier today we spoke with Dr Jerry Penso, Chief Medical and Quality Officer for the American Medical Group Management Association (AMGA), and Jim Hansen, Vice President at the Accountable Delivery Systems Institute (ADSI) a unit of Lumeris.

To listen to the broadcast click on the ‘This Week in Accountable Care’ graphic below:

The context for the chat was the release by CMS of year one results reported by the 32 participants in the ACO Pioneer program.

For Jim Hansen’s thoughts on the ‘journey’ noted above, see: Accountable Care 2.0: It’s a Journey, Not a Program. Jim’s noteworthy highlights include the metrics reported below:

‘CMS released a long-awaited checkpoint status on its Pioneer ACO program. Of the 32 entities enrolled in the program, according to CMS:

• 2 (6%) will leave the CMS ACO program altogether
• 7 (22%) will eliminate the down-side risk component by reapplying under the MSSP program
• 32 (100%) improved quality of patient care & rated highly on patient satisfaction scores
• 18 (56%) achieved some cost savings, 13 (41%)saved enough to share savings with Medicare
• 2 (6%) cost Medicare more and will owe $4M back
• 12 (38%) did not achieve significant savings•
• $140M in total savings, $52.4M in total losses, $76M in shared shavings to be returned to 13 (41%)Pioneers
• $33M in net savings for the Medicare Trust Funds.’

For additional context – both narrative and ‘moving the needle’ transformational – with links to the original CMS announcement, see: ‘Pioneers Take Arrows While Settlers’ Get the Land?’ or Michel Millenson‘s informed, witty and dead on accurate take on ‘This Week in Health Innovation’. To quote Michael, per the attributed impact of the ACA irrespective of the relentless attempts to appeal ‘ObamaCare’:

we’re finally moving the iceberg…