‘Pioneers Take Arrows While Settlers’ Get the Land?’

At the ACO Summit in Washington DC in June 2012 Elliott Fisher, MD arguably one of the admitted father’s of the ACO movement opined perhaps prophetically from a panel including Mark McClellan, MD and former Health Affairs Editor, now RWJF Senior Health Policy Advisor Susan Dentzer the above wisdom. Today, CMS via the Center for Medicare …

4th National ACO Summit: Some Contextual Reflection

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH When ‘Acting Administrator’ of CMS Don Berwick gleefully announced the final rule guiding the development and Federal certification of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) on October 20th, 2011, he thereby officially unleashed the power of the largest single payer for healthcare services in the United States to simultaneously govern while informing …

Day 2 4th National ACO Summit

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Year four for the annual DC gathering of the best and brightest minds in the ACO space, convened yesterday in pre-conference sessions at the Hyatt Regency, DC. Day 2 kicks off with a keynote by Senator Ron Wyden @RonWyden, followed by a power packed tour de force of ACO operatives: …

Back to the Future: Another Run for PPMC’s v2.0?

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH This is about as good a framing of the failed run during the 1990s when the physician practice management (PPMC) industry caught the attention of Wall Street and had a 10 year run before a literal collapse of what many considered a ponzi scheme at heart. Bottom line is Wall …

The Window on the ACO Class of 2014 Is Closing Soon!

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH For those of you not glued to your Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or other business or brand ‘listening’ outposts and/or dashboards 24/7, let me paste a series of tweets posted by @ACOwatch earlier today extracting some key points made by Martie Ross of PYA Health on the risks of inaction relative to …

The 9 C’s of Accountable Care with Tom Doerr, MD

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Recently I came across a blog post titled ‘The Nine C’s of Successful Accountable Primary Care Delivery’ by Tom Doerr, MD. I had the additional opportunity to participate in a portion of The Collaborative Payer Model: 5 Lessons for Accountable Care webinar which Dr. Doerr led wherein he unbundled some …

CMS Call: Tips on Submitting Application for Medicare MSSP ACO

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH There are those trying to figure out how to best ‘build out’ if not perfect (as in the Pioneer class) an ACO, while an even larger pool ‘leaning’ in the direction of playing, are focused on the mechanics of the application process. As with the ‘interface model’ that’s kept the …

First Round of ACO Results Due Soon

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Most of us watching and trying to interpret the ACO tea leaves are both challenged yet determined to assimilate a coherent picture of what’s happening at the ‘industry zeitgeist’ level. As noted previously, once you’ve seen one ACO, you seen one ACO. Since there is ample confusion from the differences …

Meet the Florida Association of ACOs (FLAACOS)

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH I just finished chatting with the instigator of the Florida Association of ACOs (FLAACOS). Nicole Bradberry, CEO. Nicole’s story in part tracks back to the first meeting of the National Association of ACOs (NAACOS), where she got the idea to build a state level resource for identify and share best practices, drive …

Some Context and Perspective on Standing Up the ACO

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH I am passionate and write a fair amount about health reform, innovation in business models and the pursuit of a ‘sustainable healthcare ecosystem’ as I’ve been intimately involved in serial efforts to restrain the appetite of a change resistant industry that Shannon Brownlee aptly frames in Escape Fire the hard …