Monitoring the birth of an industry
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH ACOs, Meaningful Use (aka MU), the persistent ‘whitewater’ of health reform and the quest for the elusive ‘triple aim’ will be at the center of our chat today on Meaningful Use: MU Live Radio. MU Live! is a 30 minute internet talk radio show hosted by our HITECH Answers experts. Our session …
Continue reading “Today on MU Live Radio: ACOs & Meaningful Use Connecting the Dots”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH It takes courage to live a life of consistent integrity. Owning the occasional ‘wreckage of one’s presence’ (you know when things don’t go your way or as planned) can at times be an emotional and intellectual stretch. After all, we do live in a society that often embraces the transfer …
Continue reading “A Gentle Appeal to Healthcare Social Media Thought Leadership”
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 We’re seeing a flurry of reports on ACOs quoting the Leavitt Partners report ‘Growth and Dispersion of Accountable Care Organizations‘ published last year, see previous post for access here. Meanwhile we chatted with report authors Andrew Croshaw and Thomas Merrill who provided additional context and insight into their findings on …
Continue reading “The Incidence of ACOs: The Leavitt Report”
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”
acowatch.me 