Continued Growth Of Public And Private Accountable Care Organizations
According to the article:
As of the end of January 2013, we have identified 428 different ACOs throughout the country.
ACOs are still a work in process and their eventual success or failure is still to be determined, but the accountable care movement’s influence on the American health care system is already being felt. In 2013, many ACOs will complete their first year under a risk-based ACO contract, and their early results will influence how payers, providers and policymakers experiment with future iterations of accountable care. If the results are good, then the ACO model may become the dominant form of health care in the United States over the next decade.
ACOs are health care entities intended to lower health care costs, improve quality outcomes and improve the experience of care. The premise of the ACO is that each of these results can be obtained by moving away from volume-driven fee-for-service based reimbursement toward payment models that reward care coordination and quality outcomes.
If you notice.. their first function is to SAVE MONEY… everything else .. is a side effect or consequence of the first..
If you haven’t heard about a ACO… stick around you will.. if you are not now part of a ACO… stick around you will be..
Filed under: General Problems
Back in early 90’s.. it was claimed that the AMA went to Medicare Part B and said that if they get rid of all the billing paperwork we will agree to take a 10% cut in allowables..
Medicare’s answer ??? NO THANK YOU !!!
Have you noticed the huge ‘overhead’ in our healthcare system? I am talking about the number of ‘pencil pushers’. I would not be surprised if the number of people ‘managing’ our healthcare system would be more than the population of some of the small countries in the world. Can you imagine the cost of ‘administering’ our healthcare system? I am talking about Medicare, Medicare Part D, Medicaid, insurance companies…you name it. If we could cut out most of the administrative costs, can you imagine how much more money would be available for actually providing healthcare to the population? This ACO is just another example of people getting paid to try and manage healthcare. It is another tweaking of an inefficient and very costly healthcare system.