Growth And Dispersion Of Accountable Care Organizations In 2015 | The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere
David Muhlestein
March 31, 2015
In January, an additional 89 provider organizations joined the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) as accountable care organizations (ACOs). While this year’s new entrants are a smaller cohort than those that joined in 2013 and 2014, they represent a continuation of the expansion of the accountable care movement.
The recent Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announcement of its goal to move 50 percent of Medicare payments to alternative payment models (including ACO-based arrangements) indicates the government’s strong backing of the model and, coupled with continuing endorsement of the approach from state Medicaid programs and commercial insurers, there is strong support for this care delivery approach to continue.
In an ACO, health care providers accept responsibility for the cost and quality of care for a defined population. Each ACO’s laudable goal is to achieve what Don Berwick has called the “triple aim” — to improve quality, increase patient satisfaction, and lower costs. The key to reaching those goals is to change how providers are paid, based on reaching certain cost and quality benchmarks. In effect, the objective is to change incentives so that it is in providers’ best interest to maximize health, rather than focus on increasing the volume of services rendered.
ACO GrowthLeavitt Partners has been actively tracking ACOs since 2010, maintaining a database that is updated regularly from publicly available information and personal and industry interviews. Over the past year, approximately 120 organizations have become ACOs in public and private programs, bringing the total to 744 since 2011 (Figure 1). The historical ACO growth data shown in Figure 1 are slightly different from our past estimates, as they are now based on the start date of the ACO’s contract, not on when the ACO was announced.
For example, the 89 ACOs announced in December 2014 are listed as beginning in January 2015, which is the start of their contract. Regardless of how many contracts an ACO is engaged in, both public and private, an ACO is counted only once. Note that some of the new Medicare Shared Savings Program participants already had commercial contracts, and are thus tracked beginning at the start of their first contract.
Figure 1. Total Public and Private Accountable Care Organizations, 2011 to January 2015 (See top)
Source: Leavitt Partners Center for Accountable Care Intelligence
In addition to growth in the total number of ACOs, there has been continued growth in the number of people covered by ACO arrangements
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