ACO train has left station SCOTUS decision irrelevant to market innovation?

By Karen M. Cheung Regardless of how the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on the healthcare law, accountable care organizations are moving forward in coordinating patient care, improving quality and cutting costs. With yesterday’s announcement from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 27 providers will be embarking on the Medicare Shared Savings Program, effective …

Accountable Care and Social Media: Can it connect the silo’s?

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH In an article posted on KevinMD by the always learned and insightful George Lundberg, MD*, the question was posed: can ACO’s re-invent the American Health Care System? A rather compelling and timely question given the fragmentation and vertical silo’s characteristic of American health care finance and delivery, and the ‘patient-centric’ enhancements …

ACO Deep Dive Session at this Year’s Health Datapalooza

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH This just in from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and HDI Forum III: The CMS Innovation Center is helping plan one session of this two-day event. An ACO “deep dive” will demonstrate how Accountable Care Organizations can make effective use of claims data through innovative software services and …

They Shoot Horses’ Don’t They?

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Some may remember the movie ‘They Shoot Horses’ Don’t They‘ [caution: a rather graphic depiction of an exit]. The plot borrowing from the humane ‘taking them out of their misery’ [post injury] if you will, albeit in the context of certain determined dance partners ‘desperate to win a Depression-era dance marathon and the …

Bundled Payment: A Gateway to Accountable Care?

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Advisory Board senior consultant and talented speaker (I might add), recently penned a blog post titled: ‘Bundled Payment: A Stepping Stone for ACO’s? I Don’t Buy It.’ I read this well constructed piece, but came to a rather different conclusion. In his set up Rob posits: As I have previously …

A 6th Difference Between ACOs and “AC-Like” Arrangements

By Vince Kuraitis The post originally appeared on the e-caremanagement blog. Last week I wrote about five key differences between formal ACOs (mainly care providers contracting with Medicare)  and informal Accountable Care-Like (AC-Like) arrangements between care providers and commercial health plans. Transaction costs Timing Incrementalism Flexibility Capital cost There’s an important  6th  difference worth noting: Visibility Formal …

Physicians Surveyed Gloomy About Healthcare Reform

By Patricia Salber Editor’s Note: Article originally published at The Doctor Weighs In. Recently, The Doctors Company, aka @doctorscompany, the country’s largest insurer of physician and surgeon medical liability, decided to survey doctors to determine what they are thinking and feeling about health reform.  The results are pretty gloomy. To put this in context, it is important to understand …

AMGA12: The ‘half life’ of a conference hashtag

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Thanks to fellow healthtweep @PhilBaumann, I learned of another cool ‘infographic’ app to track and display select hashtag metrics posted to Twitter. Below is the infographic created with Visual.ly for the AMGA 2012 Annual Conference tagged #AMGA12: infographic created with visual.ly

That’s Not an ACO!

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH One of the last ‘super PHOs’ standing circa the blood bath, grand ‘risk push-back’ and subsequent unwinding of many physician/hospital JVs of the 90s, Advocate Health Partners (aka @AdvocateHealth) and it’s aligned payor partner, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois (aka @BCBSIL) went public with their commercial ACO results …

The Braintrust of Accountable Care aka AMGA Descends Upon San Diego: Who Knew!

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH In a chance conversation with my friend, fellow ‘healthtweep’ and patient empowerment co-conspirator Dave DeBronkart, aka @epatientdave, I learned yesterday that AMGA aka @theAMGA was holding their annual meeting in San Diego. This is perhaps the largest concentration of ‘doers’ in the accountable care movement. Many participated in the landmark …