Accountable Care

The plan claims to give employers the potential to save up to 15 percent over Aetna's traditional broad provider network plans.

Baptist made money doing what used to be industry heresy: reducing patients' use of the medical system.

Narrow networks, accountable care, wellness screenings and health management all helped the city cut its annual cost increases for employee health from 10 percent to just over 1 percent.

Good communication between hospitalists and primary care physicians at the time of discharge is critical to patient safety and to the reduction of risk. Unfortunately, this communication has historically been “one way” in the form of a discharge summary.

Texas health system offering patients more choice and nurturing its own health plan, even while collaborating with major insurers.

For example, among narrow network plans, median premiums are 10 percent higher for plans with an academic medical center than for those without.

As it designs a merged network with academic and community care, Georgia's largest health system is lining up value-based payment deals.

CMS programs that focus on alternative payment models such as accountable care organizations, which currently serve eight million people, and population health, are moving a fragmented system tied to fee-for-service into a future in which costs are controlled and care is improved.

Home-based medicine is poised to fix the crises in American healthcare, and old and new companies are getting ready.

Physicians, nurses, and other primary care providers may have more to look forward to than they have to fear from a shift in defining scope of practice.