About

This blog follows Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and their derivative ‘accountable care collaborations’, tracking their incidence and prevalence, to coin an epidemiology metaphor, while educating and informing both consumers and professionals.

Given their expected rapid and perhaps viral growth leading up to the January 1, 2012 go live date this could get interesting. So, ‘ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.’

‘ACO Watch’ is published by healthcare insider and activist e-patient advocate Gregg Masters, MPH, who also blogs at digitalhealth.domains, Precision Medicine Center, HealthInnovationMedia.com, as well as micro-blogs, ie, ‘tweets‘ under the same name @2healthguru and @ACOwatch.

Gregg is a co-founder, and chief executive of Health Innovation Media curators of: ACOWatch.com, JustOncology.com, IllustratorsJournal.com, including Internet Radio broadcasts: ‘This Week in Health Innovation‘,  ‘PopHealth Week‘ and ‘This Week in Accountable Care‘ on the BlogTalk Radio Network.

Gregg has served in multiple senior management strategist positions for both flagship and development stage healthcare ventures, including Managing Partner for a mobile neuro-diagnostics services company, as President & CEO and a regional hospital alliance in Orange County, California, Vice President for the largest hospital and physician provider sponsored health network in north Texas, Senior Associate Hospital Director for a major academic medical center, principal organizer of a multi-specialty academic medical group, Regional Director for Managed Care of a major proprietary hospital corporation in California, and founding member of the Preferred Health Network, the original provider sponsored PPO in California.

He also served as a founding member of the following organizations: the Southern California Healthcare Services Contracting Round table the Patient Care Assessment Council (a fore-runner to the NCQA), and the Catholic IPA Association, and a certified medical audit reviewer by the California Medical Association.

He holds a Master of Public Health degree from the University of California, at Los Angeles, School of Public Health, and a Bachelors of Arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

A father of two sons, Gregg spends his off hours on a surfboard up and down the beaches in San Diego county.

On a personal note:

I’m a “battle tested” and seasoned managed health care industry veteran who’s quite passionate about achieving a sustainable healthcare ecosystem. Our costly, siloe-ed sick care confederation is broken and arguably in need of a completely new paradigm. I have spent close to 30 years in the industry from hospital to health plan, medical group to physician network and initiator of hospital physician joint ventures.

Our industry has shown “whack a mole” resiliency when it comes to wave after wave of alphabet soup initiatives designed to control costs, manage care or rationally allocate institutional health care resources in specific communities or “markets”. Most have failed and in some case, quite spectacularly.

However, I am very intrigued by the potential of social media, and specifically Twitter to penetrate the here-to-for unresponsive bureaucracies, and flatten our “cathedrals of medicine” in such a way that the patient comes first in the health care exchange relationship.

I intend to post, participate and engage others in the conversation while I learn and share insights that hold promise for this transformational opportunity.