Smart Money, ACOs and Risk Savvy Medical Managers

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH I’ve been pondering the ‘where is the ACO smart money’ question for a while as in its answer lies greater clarity than the current high ‘noise to signal’ ratio experienced by many. Since we witness a range of opinion on whether the healthcare industry can self correct via proactive conscious …

Transformational Potential of Medicare ACOs – Part 1

Dr. David Ballard, Chief Quality Officer and Senior Vice President at the Baylor Health Care System in Dallas, TX and Executive Director of its Institute for Health Care Research and Improvement, introduces a series of articles appearing in the August 2012 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings where he shares a 3-part interview with 3 leading …

ACO Explosion

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH On ‘This Week in Accountable Care‘, Wednesday, September 5th, 2012 at noon Pacific and 3PM Eastern, my special guest is industry veteran William J. DeMarco, President and CEO of Pendulum Health. Active since the roll-out of the HMO Act, and instrumental in the development of marquee names and properties in the managed …

ACO Timeline: Key Dates and Application Process

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 …

Early Returns: ACOs Improve Management of Patient Populations, Offer Short-Term Savings

by Bryn Nelson, PhD Opportunities to be more efficient are largely under care of hospitalists, ACO director says Several years ago, Presbyterian Medical Group in Albuquerque, N.M., decided to integrate three elements of its healthcare system: its health plan, the employed medical group, and the hospital delivery system. Knitting those parts into a cohesive whole …

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 …

Un-bundling the Act: Provisions for ACOs

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH We heard a lot about the rough life of Federal legislators when one of the material objections aka ‘talking points’ to actually considering the thoughtful remedies borne via public/private discourse and years if not decades of health policy development and experience outlined in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act …

ACOs, PCMHs and Risk Contracting: A Primer

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 …

The Medicare Shared Savings vs. Pioneer ACOs

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 …

AMGA 2012: The complete ‘digital footprint’

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH The synopsis tweeted is pasted below: Final ‘digital footprint’ for #AMGA12: Reached 66,842 peeps via 273 tweets & an exposure of 638,735 impressions The trade group arguably representing a majority of forward thinking and innovation oriented, in terms of the active exploration of what and how accountable care business models can be articulated, …