In the narrative matters department and following CMS’s press release on January 30th, 2014 of the ‘interim financial results for select Medicare Accountable Care Organization (ACO) initiatives, an in-depth savings analysis for Pioneer ACOs, results from the Physician Group Practice demonstration, and expanded participation in the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative’ several downstream headlines are instructive in this continuing battle for the hearts and minds of the American public towards the Affordable Care Act.
Over at Healthcare IT News, Bernie Monegain, Editor chimes in via: ‘More than half of ACOs show savings: Accountable care organizations are helped by the use of health information technology.’
While at Kaiser Health News staff writer Jenny Gold notes: ‘ACOs Saving Some Money, But Medicare Is Short On Details.’
And Melanie Evans at Modern Healthcare asserts ‘Providers net uneven results from ACO experiment‘ re-capping the data as follows:
Slightly more than half of the 114 organizations to join one of two Medicare accountable care efforts in 2012 did not reduce health spending below targets during their first 12 months trying to do so, newly released CMS data show.
Of the remaining organizations, 29 reduced spending enough to keep some of what they saved during the first 12 months. The rest slowed health spending, but marginally.
Take your pick, there are plenty more to chose from and whether your view is from a glass ‘half empty’ or ‘half full’ perspective your answer to whether the ACA is working or not, and in particular, can ACOs enable the required transformation is likely to be shaped by whether you have a dog in the hunt if not personal skin in the game.
To sort through and make some sense of this nascent industry ‘report card’ are three industry veterans who will help us dive past the headlines and into the weeds of the ACO experience. Recognizing that ACOs not a homogeneous bunch and vary operationally and by market, there is a fair amount of context setting to actually interpret the results.
On the next episode of ‘This Week in Accountable Care‘ I am joined by three seasoned players in and around the space including Fred Goldstein, Jim Hansen and David Crais.
For live or archived replay of this episode, click here.
Join us for an informative chat and tag your tweets with #ACOchat and will put your questions and/or comments into the conversation.
acowatch.me 
Leave a comment