Monitoring the birth of an industry
By Ben Miller, PsyD Accountable Care Organizations (ACO), according to NPR, takes “up only seven pages of the massive new health law” yet has become one hot topic in healthcare circles. What are ACOs and what implications do they have on the community? Well first, let’s define an ACO: Accountable Care Organizations are partnerships between …
Continue reading “ACOs, PCMHs and Risk Contracting: A Primer”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH For those not familiar with the ever expanding ‘acronym soup’ we often take for granted inside the healthcare borg: I/P/A = Independent Practice Association | H/I/T = Health Information Technology | M/S/O = Management Services Organization Judging by the ‘anemic’ numbers specific to CMS forecasts for participants in the broad …
Continue reading “IPA + HIT (aka technology stack) x MSO = ACO”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH As we trudge forward into various iterations of what and how ‘accountable care’ strategies can be sensibly configured and locally seeded for Medicare, Medicaid as well as commercial markets, attention is often focused on the ‘necessary’ but ‘not sufficient’ contribution(s) from health information technology (HIT). It is rare that a …
Continue reading “DC Health Innovation Week: A ‘Triple Aim’ Love In or More Silo’s In the Making?”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH During the ‘risk download days’, i.e., from health plan to physician groups or networks and institutional health systems or hospital partners, whether via global percent of premium, or budget driven PMPM contracts, some of us used to joke that using healthcare actuarial data to manage forward clinical risk was like …
Continue reading “The Medicare Shared Savings vs. Pioneer ACOs”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH We all love infographics, right? This one caught my eye today. Kind of a clever snapshot of the crap shoot we’re in relative to the legal and political uncertainty festering in the US today. The original graphic is courtesy of @HITconsultant via his blog here. Whether this captures the essence …
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Clearly it was just a matter of time, and again the market is driving innovation outside the codified theater of what is, or isn’t, an ACO at least from the point of view of Federal regulation. Regardless of the relative fiscal impact to the Medicare Trust Fund, i.e., where is …
Continue reading “Florida Blue and US Oncology aka Advanced Medical Specialties JV Oncology ACO”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH CMS has disclosed the recipients of the innovation grants this morning. Read their profiles below, from ‘Camp Courage to the Regents of the University of California’ representing an eclectic mix of coast-to-coast academic plays, system lead and entrepreneurial initiatives): BETH ISRAEL DEACONESS Project Title: “Preventing avoidable re-hospitalizations: Post-Acute Care Transition Program …
Continue reading “First Round of CMMI Innovation Grants Announced”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Looks like we’ll get the results of the first round of innovation grants funded via the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. Rumor has it that there will be a 2nd round of grant funding. I assume we’ll minimally hear about round 1 awards, and perhaps more. Detail via CMMI …
Continue reading “CMS Innovation Center announcement supporting health care innovation”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Patient safety peeps are a vibrant and dynamic community with a compelling voice and powerful message. Spawned in part by the Institute of Medicine’s series including ‘To Err Is Human‘ and ‘Crossing the Quality Chasm: The IOM Health Care Quality Initiative‘, the underbelly of ‘iatrogenic medicine’ was largely placed into the consciousness …
Continue reading “‘Patient safety’ a great place to incorporate accountability into process!”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH On a day when another athlete dies from self inflicted wounds, and the acronym ‘CTE‘ (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) finds its way into the popular press, while perhaps opening a line of inquiry as to health consequences of repetitive brain injury, we may find the ante in and around the ‘accountable …
Continue reading “CTE on the Accountable Care Agenda? Junior Seau it’s latest victim?”
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