Monitoring the birth of an industry
By Fred Goldstein, MS and Gregg Masters, MPH Every sector in health care is under pressure to articulate and implement a viable population health initiative that delivers on the triple aim of better health, better quality at a better cost. Despite a significant investment of resources, we have only achieved ‘mixed results’ to date, and …
Continue reading “In Pursuit of the Triple Aim: Can Population Health Management Lead the Way?”
By Fred Goldstein, MS and Gregg Masters, MPH Two macro trends are converging to further season and ultimately catalyze the transformation of the American healthcare enterprise: the predominant fee-for-service model that fuels the provider ecosystem (hospitals, health systems, medical groups, IPAs, ACOs, or managed physician networks, etc.) and their ‘partner’ financing plans, payors or administrators. Ecosystem incumbents …
Continue reading “The Road From Volume-To-Value: The Pivotal Role of Population Health”
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH Transforming a $3.2+ trillion dollar economy where approximately 1 in 5 dollars of GDP finds its way into the healthcare financing and delivery ecosystem is no small challenge. Decades of variably branded health policy initiatives from HMOs and PPOs to their arguably derivative reincarnated ‘brethren’ ACOs all presented with the …
Continue reading “A Day in the Life of an ACO Chief Executive”
by Gregg A. Masters, MPH* Since ACOs arrived in 2012 courtesy of the Section 3022: Medicare shared savings program, under Title III, Subtitle A, Part 3 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as the ‘new, new thing’ layered into a complex healthcare ecosystem peppered with more or less successful public/private efforts to restrain healthcare inflation, promote greater …
by Gregg A. Masters, MPH You may have heard the expression: ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’ Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr But what does this really mean? One interpretation is ‘change is the only constant‘ or alternatively not much new here – just old ideas rediscovered? Yet if you frame the assertion to measure …
Continue reading “The Next Generation ACO: Accelerating the Transformation from Volume to Value”
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 …
Continue reading “On the ‘N of 1’ As a Standard for ‘Accountable Care’”
by Gregg A. Masters, MPH As the Trump administration takes form via the nomination of Rep. Tom Price to ‘steward’ (or decimate) the massive bureaucracy of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with Seema Verma nominated as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Administration (CMS) the structural touch-points to manifest the ‘repeal and replace‘ agenda …
by Gregg A. Masters, MPH This is the second year I’ve ventured to Orlando to cover the Florida Associations of ACOs (@FLAACOs) Annual gathering. According to the website, the FLAACOs mission is: …to provide members a vehicle to collaborate, ensuring that each healthcare organization grows and thrives. The Florida-based association aligns goals to shift physician incentives …
Continue reading “FLAACOs 3rd Annual Fall Conference: A Retrospective”
by Fred Goldstein, M.S. Recently I took part in the Florida Trail Association (FTA) Annual Conference. The FTA develops, maintains, protects, and promotes a network of hiking trails throughout the state, including the unique Florida National Scenic Trail (FNST). This event celebrated the 50th Anniversary of FTA founding. A Brief History The National Scenic Trails were authorized under the National Trails System Act …
Continue reading “Accountable Care, Population Health and the Social Determinants of Health”
by Gregg A. Masters, MPH Creating consistent high quality original content is hard. At ACO Watch, we’re not in the business of breaking news or high frequency posts to drive eyeballs and traffic to this blog so ‘the numbers’ that might attract advertising or sponsorship (there aren’t any). Instead we (mostly me) watch the developments …
Continue reading “Final Medicare Shared Savings Program Rule (CMS-1644-F)”
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