Accountable Care

While the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is touting the success -- 11 months ahead of schedule -- of tying 30 percent of fee-for-service Medicare payments to alternative payment models such as accountable care organizations and bundled payments, questions still remain over how much money value-based programs will save.

While accountable care organizations piloted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services are expanding due to the government's focus on alternative payment models, ACOs run by private insurers are growing as health systems weigh the benefits of joining.

Large hospitals are more likely to have a contract with an accountable care organization, and those participating in ACOs were more likely to be in heavily-populated urban areas, new findings from the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice revealed.

Referral management technology vendor par8o Inc. has announced at HIMSS16 that it has expanded its relationship with WellHealth Quality Care, Nevada's first accountable care network.

Many providers are at a crossroads right now: Either join an accountable care organization or be placed into Medicare's Merit-Based Incentive Payment System.

While financial incentives influence physician behavior and moderately improve quality measures, non-incentivized providers targeted with other quality measure efforts have greater performance improvement, according to a recent study published by the JAMA Network.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Thursday said it will begin taking regional differences into account when measuring the performance of accountable care organizations in the Medicare Shared Savings program, one of several changes announced to the benchmark guidelines in the program.

Acting Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Andy Slavitt on Tuesday shocked many in healthcare when he laid out an aggressive timeline to replace the meaningful use program, a electronic health records mandate and incentive program that healthcare providers put millions into.

Next Generation joins the Pioneer ACO and the Medicare Shared Savings ACO models as the three accountable care innovation models supported by CMS. The federal agaency has said these programs will help the sector move more quickly towards value-based reimbursement.

Brown & Toland participated in Pioneer from it's inception in 2012. But the relationship is no more.