Question

What are accountable care organizations? What value can they provide to the healthcare industry?

Answer 1

Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers, who come together voluntarily to give coordinated high quality care to their Medicare patients.

The goal of coordinated care is to ensure that patients, especially the chronically ill, get the right care at the right time, while avoiding unnecessary duplication of services and preventing medical errors.

When an ACO succeeds both in delivering high-quality care and spending health care dollars more wisely, it will share in the savings it achieves for the Medicare program.

The largest benefit that accountable care could bring for the healthcare industry is to garner cost savings or reduce spending. Healthcare reforms and new federal regulations whether it is the Affordable Care Act or the HITECH Act have all brought more focus on decreasing spending throughout the medical space.