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 …

Accountable Care: In Search of Anchor Business Model(s) for the ‘All In’ Healthcare Eco-system

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Part One in a continuing series exploring the ‘all in’ healthcare eco-system (as enumerated by Reed Tuckson, MD aka @DrReedTuckson below) There is no room in the cost curve to accommodate things that don’t add value An article published late last night titled ‘Hospital Groups Will Get Bigger, Moody’s Predicts‘ presented …

L. Gordon Moore, MD on the Role of Primary Care in Accountable Care

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH In a week when Blue Shield of California served Monarch Healthcare as proxy for Optum aka United HealthGroup a $10.5 million damages demand for arbitration enumerating a number of contractual breaches, the following headline was also in the news (for full article, click here): Doctors decry Kern Medical Center cut of …

[Re-post] The ‘Medical Aggregators’: Are We Entering Round Deux?

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH [Originally written by @2healthguru on June 1, 2010 at 11:00 AM] First a little historical context: For those with a healthcare ‘event horizon’ slightly more seasoned than the current health reform ‘conversation’, you might remember the initial round of aggregation in medicine lead by disruptive nameplates such as MedPartners (now …

ACO’s: It Ain’t Just About ‘Health IT’

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH We’ve been somewhat on an unexpected hiatus since HiMSS 2012 in Las Vegas, but are now back with intent to assimilate and interpret the subtext or tea leaves driving the transformation towards accountable care. I will leave that update to another blog post, but for now, a quick comment on …

Accountable Care and HiMSS 2012

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH On the Wednesday, February 15th 2012 broadcast at 11AM Pacific/2PM Eastern, my special guest on the HIMSS 2012 Countdown Series was Vince Kuraitis,  aka @VinceKuraitis, publisher of the ‘e-care Management blog.We spoke on the connection between ‘HIT Platforms and accountable care.’ We’re one week out from the HIMSS 2012 conference …

CLOUD (Consortium for Local Ownership and Use of Data) Inc CEO on ‘N of 1 Accountable Care’

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH On the Friday, February 10th, 2012 broadcast of ‘This Week in Accountable Care’ I had the pleasure of chatting with Gary Lee Thompson, aka @GaryLeeThompson, and @CLOUDhealth on Twitter. As the second installment in our HIMSS 2012 countdown to Las Vegas, we spent some time getting to know Gary, understanding …

Wag The Dog: Will Subacute Providers Drive Upstream Innovation?

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH One of the more interesting and perhaps developing trends to watch in fledgling accountable care enterprises or ACOs is the blueprint adopted for their chosen pathways towards integration (clinical, economic or legal). Since all healthcare is [hyper] local and, once you’ve seen an ACO, you’ve seen one ACO its vital …

AHIP: It’s Not Cost Shifting, We’re ‘Unleashing Patients’

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Seriously folks, you’ve got to hand it to the PR firm supplying the American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) with the brilliant, timely and thematically near argument resistant messaging copy just revealed via a .PPT preso titled ‘Health Care Innovation in the Context of Rising Health Care Costs‘ and delivered by Karen Ignani, …

Rebuttal and Comment to ‘NYT Op Ed: Emanuel Editorial is Irresponsible and Naive’

By Vince Kuraitis Zeke Emanuel’s editorial in the New York Times — The End of Health Insurance Companies — really got my blood boiling. It’s irresponsible and naive. Former Obama advisor Emanuel “predicts”: By 2020, the American health insurance industry will be extinct. Insurance companies will be replaced by accountable care organizations — groups of …