by Gregg Anthony Masters, MPH Some of you may have heard about the whining by UnitedHealthcare’s leadership on a recent earnings call which included the required ‘management’s discussion or operating results and market conditions’ analysis. A BIG WHAAAA! Overfunded since inception and having perfected the art of ‘upcoding‘ (i.e,, severity of illness and intensity of …
Tag Archives: accountable care organization
Need Another Acronym? Think ‘CHART’ Courtesy of ‘CMMI’
by Gregg A. Masters, MPH In a sea of relentless ‘acronym soup’ that peppers the landscape and too often separates us from the constituency we ostensibly serve (patients) via added layers of dubious complexity to the dysfunctional U.S. healthcare delivery and financing ecosystem, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) has added the ‘Community …
Continue reading “Need Another Acronym? Think ‘CHART’ Courtesy of ‘CMMI’”
Venrock’s 2019 Healthcare Prognosis
by Gregg A. Masters, MPH Received this embargoed report earlier this week. Venrock has formally released the report this morning. One reason I am fond of their work is I’ve been following Bob Kocher, one of Venrock’s principals, since the turbulent introduction of the ACA by the Obama administration. More recently perhaps due to Venrock’s …
ACOs in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP): Is There a Fix?
by Gregg A. Masters, MPH The Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform just released ‘How to Fix the Medicare Shared Savings Program‘ with lead author and long term managed health care industry veteran Harold D. Miller, its President and CEO. Some six (6) years into the Affordable Care Act (ACA) provisions specific to Accountable Care …
Continue reading “ACOs in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP): Is There a Fix?”
Tufts Health Plan Forms MassHealth Accountable Care Organization Partnership with Four Provider Organizations
Press Release | Watertown, MA | August 18, 2017 The Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) recently announced that Tufts Health Plan has signed contracts to form Medicaid (MassHealth) Accountable Care Organization (ACO) partnerships with four provider organizations: Atrius Health, Beth Israel Deaconess Care Organization, Cambridge Health Alliance, and Boston Children’s Accountable Care Organization. The new ACOs feature a value‐based …
What, What? ACOs Not ‘DOA’?
by Gregg A. Masters, MPH When the Affordable Care Act passed in March of 2010 and the law’s many moving parts analyzed by the ecosystem stakeholders including operators, health wonks and patient advocates many weighed in that ACOs were doomed to fail. They were just too ‘tepid’ to make a material contribution to the volume …
ACO Winners and Losers: A Quick Take
by Ashish K. Jha Last week, CMS sent out press releases touting over $1 billion in savings from Accountable Care Organizations. Here’s the tweet from Andy Slavitt, the acting Administrator of CMS: Andy Slavitt ✔@ASlavitt NEW ACO RESULTS: physicians are changing care, w better results for patients & are saving money. Over $1B. https://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Press-releases/2016-Press-releases-items/2016-08-25.html … 1:32 PM – …
Final Medicare Shared Savings Program Rule (CMS-1644-F)
by Gregg A. Masters, MPH Creating consistent high quality original content is hard. At ACO Watch, we’re not in the business of breaking news or high frequency posts to drive eyeballs and traffic to this blog so ‘the numbers’ that might attract advertising or sponsorship (there aren’t any). Instead we (mostly me) watch the developments …
Continue reading “Final Medicare Shared Savings Program Rule (CMS-1644-F)”
The Droids You Are Looking For Are Not Here
by Gregg A. Masters, MPH Beneath the ideological crossfire and mostly bluster of the ACA ‘repeal and replace crowd’, while the latest ‘new, new, thing‘ aka the defacto Rorschach upside of a litany of mostly vaporware or me too ‘meh‘ digital health apps, platforms or S-1 filings (see: ‘Disruptive Idiots from Silicon Valley‘) stumble into maturity amidst …
Continue reading “The Droids You Are Looking For Are Not Here”
ACOs and Population Health: The Value Narrative
by Gregg A. Masters, MPH Before there was ‘accountable care’, the current full court press towards innovation – whether digital health app, platform or service delivery model, an emerging culture of transformation or the attendant pursuit of the triple aim, not to mention the most recent obsession with ‘retail as cure’ for that which ails healthcare, …
Continue reading “ACOs and Population Health: The Value Narrative”
acowatch.me 