Just released is the continuing pulse of the accountable care industry (not just ACOs per se) via the consulting firm branded with the imprimatur of a former Secretary of HHS Michael Leavitt who opines from the Red State of Utah on the progress made by market driven initiatives outlined 
in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).
I will add my thoughts to the Leavitt commentary shortly, but the one slide that caught my attention y/e 2014 was the crossover by provider type from physician led to institutionally (hospital system) led ACOs.
One might say that the traditional revenue side vs. cost basis of a hospital group is now at the head of the class of ACO innovation is the wrong form of ‘disruptive leadership’.
Yet, it’s interesting to note that the American Hospital Association (AHA) is a principal partner if not co-sponsor of the report. Might this be a filtering outcome of the ‘fox guarding the hen house‘ or even the aggregate impact (conscious or otherwise) of strategy driven choices by CEOs of U.S. Health Systems?
By way of context, as a long as hospitals maintain their ‘revenue center’ primacy vs, their actual role (in the sustainable healthcare ecosystem food chain) as the true ‘cost centers’ they are – at least in legally, financially and clinically integrated delivery systems or networks (IDNs), how can ‘hospital culture’ be expected to pro-actively cannibalize a bread-and-butter fee-for-services business model in a reimbursement paradigm largely dominated by volume driven incentives even in 2015? Only a disinterested third party (aka physician led ACOs) can re-engineer the needed disruption of maldistributed, asset concentrated overpriced hospital services.
For the complete Leavitt Partners report click here.
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