Transforming healthcare delivery: Why and how accountable care organizations must evolve.
Accountable care organizations (ACOs) have shown promise in reducing healthcare spending growth, but have proven to be financially unsustainable for many healthcare organizations. Even ACOs with shared savings have experienced overall losses because the shared savings bonuses have not covered the costs of delivering population health. As physicians and former ACO leaders, we believe in the concept of accountable care, but ACOs need to evolve if they are to have a viable future. We propose the novel possibility of allowing ACOs to bill fee-for-service for their population health interventions, a concept we call population health billing. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2016;11:658-661. © 2016 Society of Hospital Medicine.
Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. chris.chen@post.harvard.edu.
Christopher T
CT
Chen
naviHealth, Brentwood, Tennessee.
D Clay
DC
Ackerly
Partners in Health and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
Gary
G
Gottlieb
D060866:Accountable Care Organizations / Q000191:economics*; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods*; D018588:Fee-for-Service Plans; D006801:Humans; D006278:Medicare / Q000191:economics; D058991:Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; D014481:United States