National Association of ACOs et al Weigh in on the ‘Value in Health Care Act of 2020’

by Gregg A. Masters, MPH Article discovered via the National Association of ACOs (NAACOs) a ‘501 (c) 6 non-profit organization that allows Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) to work together to increase quality of care, lower costs and improve the health of their communities’ . NAACOs et al weigh in on the Value in Health Care …

Health Care ‘Texas Style’: A Model for the Nation?

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH This a re-post of an article written in October 2009 following Atul Gawande‘s article in the New Yorker on the ‘cost conundrum‘ which launched his presence and eventual celebrity on the national stage. Gawande was calling attention to the regional variations (small area analysis) in the Medicare spend and associated …

ACOs and Value Based Care: The Best of Times Or The Worst of Times? It Depends!

By Fred Goldstein, MS and Gregg Masters, MPH This past year has seen major changes to the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) that launched the huge growth in Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) a principal workhorse in the transformational copy of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  It seems that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services …

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General: ACOs’ Strategies for Transitioning to Value-Based Care – Lessons From the Medicare Shared Savings Program

by Gregg A. Masters, MPH Many have suggested ACOs would not make a dent in restraining the growth of the U.S. healthcare spend, nor have a meaningful impact on elevating the quality of care provided to covered members or beneficiaries (patients). From ‘HMO-lite‘ criticism to a range of ‘tepid’ to no patient channeling mechanisms, recent …

APG: Overview of CMMI New Models – Primary Care First and Direct Contracting

by Gregg A. Masters, MPH The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed – Attributed to William Gibson As a soldier mainstreaming both HMOs and (‘attorney in fact‘ vs. messenger model) 2nd generation PPOs (that re-priced claims to contract rates) into ‘mainstream medicine‘ in California vs. the then prevailing 2nd or 3rd tier physician/provider …

On Lessons NOT Learned from Managed Healthcare v1.0 and Beyond

by Gregg A. Masters, MPH First in a series of lessons NOT learned tweets to be enhanced and re-posted to @ACOwatch. In the 80s Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Kenneth Abramowitz predicted for-profit hospital systems would dominate the market by 2000. One of the strategy ‘diversification arrows‘ in the quiver of hospital system executives was to enter the …

From HMOs and PPOs to ACOs and DPCs: What’s Next?

by Gregg A. Masters, MPH It may come to a surprise for some  that ‘healthcare innovation‘ has been in play for quite some time albeit not fueled by a culture of hacking or disrupting legacy operations principally via technology. Unfortunately a veritable acronym soup of mostly failed initiatives under varying degrees of public, private partnership …

The Evolution of ACOs

by Gregg A. Masters, MPH Recently the accountable care industry’s leading ‘skin in the game‘ PPMC 2.0 aka ‘ACOcor‘ equivalent (think PhyCor, MedPartners, FPA Medical, et al) of our time – though Aledade’s model is anything like the pyramid scheme of the PPMC (physician practice management companies) of the 1990s, reviewed the Center for Medicare and Medicaid …

In Pursuit of the Triple Aim: Can Population Health Management Lead the Way?

By Fred Goldstein, MS and Gregg Masters, MPH Every sector in health care is under pressure to articulate and implement a viable population health initiative that delivers on the triple aim of better health, better quality at a better cost. Despite a significant investment of resources, we have only achieved ‘mixed results’ to date, and …

Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Releases Accountable Care Organization Performance Results

by Gregg A. Masters, MPH Friday, October 27th, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released details for participating Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) for the 2016 performance year.  For reporting ACO results view the entire report here. The National Association of ACOs (NAACOs) weighed in below: The new results …