Accountable Care Organizations: Looking Back and Moving Forward

ust three or four years ago, accountable care organizations (ACOs) were being compared to the mythical unicorn – an intriguing idea, but one impossible to see in reality. Today, ACOs are very much a reality, with roughly 750 in operation – for Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial populations – serving 23.5 million people across the United States.1 ACOs are designed to achieve the Triple Aim of better health, improving patient experience, and lowering costs.2 While not all ACOs have demonstrated success in delivering better health outcomes at a lower cost, many have achieved promising results.3,4,5