As Value-Based Care expands, payers are emphasizing cost reduction all the more. Newer CMS payment models like ACO REACH reinforce cost control by capping reimbursement in total global payments to ACOs. In turn, global payments enable ACOs to directly negotiate rates with preferred provider specialists. In addition to focusing on controlling costs delivered through primary […]
Three Data-Driven Approaches to Engage Specialists in ACOs
All ACOs, regardless of payment model, are built on a vision of primary care services to patients. Medicare attributes patients to your ACO based on the plurality of primary care services. CMS attributes a patient to a participating specialist only if the patient has not seen a primary care physician in the ACO or at […]
5 Key Health Care Trends to Watch for in 2023
After an intense few years in health care, will 2023 deliver more punches? While 2022 was dubbed a COVID “recovery” year, as patient volume rebounded, health care staffing shortages festered. Burnout prompted physicians to retire, sell practices to corporate owners, or leave traditional health care for other employment. Simply put, 2022 was short on recovery […]
Launch Time! Five Intervention Strategies to Fuel Your APM Liftoff
If you’ve followed the Smart Guide articles so far, your APM is ready for take-off. You’ve developed a data-sufficient technology infrastructure with both provider and claims data, carefully constructed your clinical network and engaged your clinicians, and implemented strategies for payers and consumers. Your APM may be operating already, with data ready to use. Now […]
3 Ways to Engage Physicians to Lead Transformation in Your APM
Doctors leaving medicine spells trouble for health care. And there’s real reason for concern. A few weeks ago, the Mayo Clinic released its most recent study on physician burnout, revealing the highest rate in the survey’s 10-year history. Sixty-three percent of responding physicians reported one or more characteristics of burnout, with many noting depersonalization, an […]
5 Imperatives for Your Value-Based Technology to Support APMs
After years spent transforming your health care technology, you may feel like you’re almost done. But Value-Based Care Technology requires a different mindset. With reimbursement scaling to a tipping point for APM adoption, think “reboot” instead. Your health system or group has a long way to go if your aggregated and integrated data cannot support […]
New ACO Playbook: How to Supercharge Your ACO
Throughout the last decade of ACO development, many have struggled to identify what actually makes ACOs successful. Analyses have been fraught with conflicting conclusions. Studies have tagged type of ownership (hospital-based vs. physician-led), geographic region or urban-rural factors, primary-care-only versus specialty participation, ACO payment model type, patient volume, and operations strategies as links to success […]
New ACO Playbook: Seven Keys to Expanding ACO Savings—and Market Share
At the beginning of this series, we laid out a basic tenet: As shared savings plan ACOs, you need to do as well or better at lowering costs than competing value-based payment models. Otherwise, your resources and support will dwindle in favor of more promising avenues to control Medicare spending, and competition will stifle your […]
New ACO Playbook: How ACOs Can Transform Clinical Care for Diabetes
An illuminating article about ACOs, featuring current and former MedPAC chairs’ perspectives, argues that savings have been constrained because too much is beyond ACOs’ purview to manage. Examples include both external restrictions (the exclusion of prescription drugs and provider fee payments from ACO control) and internal cultural or economic barriers (conflicts of interest that make […]
New ACO Playbook: Can Coordination of Care Save Enough Money to Save ACOs?
Central to the controversy about ACOs’ potential for Value-Based Care is whether they actually save enough money and reduce costs fast enough. Researchers and advocates have produced various independent studies of ACO savings, the most generous estimating $1.8 billion in cumulative savings over the first three years of the program, almost double CMS estimates. Many […]