Will Health Systems Recover from the COVID-19 Pandemic?

by Gregg A. Masters, MPH and Fred Goldstein, MS* In the still unfolding operating ‘new normal‘ wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic the path forward presents perhaps the career challenge of a lifetime to both seasoned and emerging U.S. healthcare leadership. No doubt, in health system c-suites across the nation the strategic question is and will …

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 …

On the ‘N of 1’ As a Standard for ‘Accountable Care’

by Gregg A. Masters, MPH When I penned the post, ‘CTE on the Accountable Care Agenda? Junior Seau it’s latest victim?‘ in 2012 my intention was to draw a circle around seemingly unrelated events now finding increasing conversational gravity in the emerging ‘population health‘ zeitgeist where social determinants of health are valued as strategic grist …

ACO Onramp: Reading the Pioneer [Exit] Tea Leaves

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Whenever someone buys a stock for the most part they make a decision that weighs available public (and sometimes ‘non public’) information and concludes that the company’s value exceeds (currently or shortly will) that which is expressed in the bid/offer price points the day the purchase is executed. Yet, there …

Are Institutionally Led ACOs ‘DOA’? I Say Heck Yah!

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH At the end of the [business model and strategic positioning] day, it’s all about the intangible but mission critical ‘C’ word, i.e., culture, and whether two traditionally oppositional styles (physician v. hospital) can mash-up and ‘meaningfully integrate’ (clinically, legally & workflow wise) where previous attempts during the 80s and 90s …

Standing Up the ACO: Lessons from South Park?

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH On Sunday I was chatting with a friend in the biz and the conversation turned to ACOs, wherein he whimsically laughed and then relayed a story from a recent California Medical Association (CMA) sponsored event on health reform, the future of medicine and Accountable Care Organizations, wherein one of the …

Hospitals Back in Insurance Biz: Good News or Bad News?

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH I awoke this morning to read the following headline: Hospitals Look To Become Insurers, As Well As Providers Of Care To wit, I ‘tweeted’: OK, it’s reallly ‘deja vu’ all over again! ‘Hospitals Look To Become Insurers, As Well As Providers Of Care’ For complete original article, click here. Mind …

How Hospitals Can Test the Waters of Accountable Care

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Found on the Accountable Care Bulletin. Hospitals considering accountable care strategies have plenty of options to choose from, but deciding where to begin can be confusing. Joseph Damore, Vice President of Engagement and Delivery for Premier, explores how hospitals can test the waters of accountable care, from engaging staff in wellness …

Inside ‘accountable care’, challenges to the ACO

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH We hear considerable chatter on both sides of the ACO or ‘AC/e’ for accountable care focused enterprise absent the organizational drama of fielding an entity per se with the right structural roots or cultural ‘DNA’. Yet, as someone with principal leadership immersion both setting up and managing the ACO ancestry …