Monitoring the birth of an industry
By Jeff Goldsmith In the ten months since the passage of health reform, health care managers, particularly those in hospitals and health systems, have struggled to make sense of an onslaught of change in Medicare policy. The response has been depressing: an accelerating wave of merger and acquisition activity, both horizontal hospital mergers and an …
Continue reading “Virginia Mason’s Clinical Transformation: Hard Work, Big Payoff”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH No. 1 – The ‘O, G & E’ Card At UC Berkeley in the 70s, the secretary in the Department of Psychology pasted a bumper sticker on her desk positing the humility laced question: ‘…you may be correct [in your storied judgment], but are you asking the right questions?’ For …
Continue reading “6 Reasons Your ACO Will Fail (A Series) – Any One Will Do!”
By Ken Terry for HHN Magazine What hospitals need to know about accountable care; No. 1: Build strong relationships with physicians Building an accountable care organization is viewed by many hospital executives as the holy grail as they try to figure out how to better manage patient care across the continuum and as they brace …
A Brookings Event at The Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act created the Medicare Shared Savings program to implement Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), coordinated networks of providers with shared responsibility for providing better care at lower costs. Officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are …
Continue reading “Achieving Better Care at Lower Costs through ACOs”
By Victoria Stagg Elliott, Amednews A hospital partner may not be necessary for an accountable care organization to be effective, according to a report analyzing a primary care-led ACO. Physicians increasingly are selling their practices to hospitals, which are buying in preparation for the development of ACOs and other aspects of health system reform. People …
By Patricia Salber, M.D. via ‘The Doctor Weighs In’ Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are supposed to be provider-led (physician groups +/- hospitals) and, they are supposed to inject a new accountability, at the provider level, for the value of services delivered. You know the old equation. VALUE=QUALITY/COST. Those of us inside the health policy “beltway” …
Continue reading “Will Accountable Care Organizations Become ‘HMOs In Drag”?”
By Naveen aka @naveen101 Earlier this week, I sat in on a roundtable discussion of health insurance plan CEO’s from around the country. The topic jumped from Medicare Advantage bonus payments to general quality improvement, to the insurance industry’s perception by Joe Q. Public, and of course, what role health plans will end up playing in …
By Richard L. Reece, MD What follows is an interview with Bill DeMarco, a health care consultant for more than 30 years and an advisor on Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). The subject of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) accounted for only 10 pages of the 2500 page health reform bill. Yet ACOs are now the buzz, …
The brodcast today on ACO Watch: A Mid-Week Review was a, well, d/i/s/a/s/t/e/r: Per Wikipedia: A disaster is a natural or man-made hazard that has come to fruition, resulting in an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the natural environment. A disaster can be …
Continue reading “An ACO Watch: Mid-Week Review ‘Mea Culpa’!”
Tomorrow, January 26th, 2011 we’ll review headlines in the ACO market, and focus specifically on the cultural antecedents and pathways for engaging ‘independent physician’ participation in ACOs. Other than mature IDN’s such as Mayo, Kaiser and Geisinger, et al, who have risen to the head of the class when discussing ACO potential, there is a second tier of …
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