Monitoring the birth of an industry
By Michael Planchart, Perficient, Inc. The Journey of a thousand miles towards an ACO begins with one step. Healthcare organizations are coming to realize that the programs stimulated by the ARRA – HITECH Act, Meaningful Use (MU) and Accountable Care Organizations (ACO), require something that they don’t have in sufficient quantities, the desired type or in …
Continue reading “Big Data, Little Information, and the ACO Big Picture”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as of July 1, 2012 89 new Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) began serving 1.2 million Medicare beneficiaries in 40 States and Washington, D.C. These 89 new ACOs have entered into agreements with CMS, taking responsibility for the quality of care …
Continue reading “ACO Timeline: Key Dates and Application Process”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH The clock has been officially ticking for the more mature ACO Pioneer class and recently anointed, perhaps less sophisticated pool of market entrants, in the Advanced Payment Model or standard Medicare Shared Savings Program. Clearly, top of mind strategic questions du’ jour in many board rooms and standing committee conversations …
Continue reading “Standing Up the ACO: A View from Ground Zero”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Recognizing that all healthcare is local and typically imprinted with variable leadership DNA, risk maturity levels, provider concentration or segmentation, competitive dynamics, urban v. suburban and rural market considerations, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) including the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) refined and offered several …
Continue reading “The Advanced ACO Payment Model: An Unlikely Source of Innovation?”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Let’s start here, the healthcare industry is a $2.5 trillion behemoth unlike any other in the US economy. At roughly 20% of GDP, 1 out of every 5 dollars spent in the US works it’s way into a complex, silo-ed, discontinuous, often schizophrenic and certainly misaligned series of volume vs. …
Continue reading “The 5 Myths of the Republican Health Reform Solution”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Only another battle has been won, (tho’ an effing big one at that), yet the war to re-engineer America’s healthcare borg remains intact and the Act is at risk to the outcome of November’s elections. In a perfect world 100% of our resources are committed to implementation of the vision, yet in …
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Found over at the Healthcare Blog, a post SCOTUS Affordable Care Act conversation hosted by Eliza Corp and led by noted healthcare futurist and consultant Jeff Goldsmith. This is well worth a view and even note taking. Among Goldsmith’s many insights is the following: A stunning lack of understanding of …
Continue reading “The Affordable Care Act: What’s Changed Post SCOTUS Ruling?”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH A Profile of ACO’s Selected for July 1, 2012 Start Date Per CMS Annoucement: On July 9, 2012, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the selection of 89 additional Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) to participate in the Medicare Shared Saving Program. The selected organizations will take responsibility …
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Watching the ensuing theater unleashed by SCOTUS’ ruling on the Affordable Care Act, I came across some similar sound bytes from a ‘by gone era’ – or so we thought. Since we are not likely to see these disingenuous, ‘don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is already made up’ foes fold …
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH As I have penned over at XanateMedia in ‘The Triple Aim Sets the Agenda for Healthcare Social Media Community,’ while the aftermath of the SCOTUS ruling is predictably lining up along straight partisan lines, the net takeaway for healthcare social media peeps is to get behind the ‘triple aim’. Yet we …
Continue reading “The Affordable Care Act in Historical Context: Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way”
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