Cost in shoulder surgery has taken on a new focus with passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. As part of this law, there is a provision for Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and the bundled payment initiative. In this model, one entity would receive a single payment for an episode of care and distribute funds to all other parties involved. Given its reproducible nature, ...

Mary Downs, Executive Director Craig Hanna, Director of Public Policy Cori Uccello, Senior Health Fellow Heather Jerbi, Senior Health Policy Analyst An Actuarial Perspective on Accountable Care Organizations The Affordable Care Act (ACA) and regulations implementing it incorporate a concept that some health reform proponents have advocated for several years: an Accountable Care Organization (AC...

Accountable care organizations (ACOs) have received significant attention since passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the spring of 2010. The ACA directs the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to create the Medicare Shared Savings Program, which encourages groups of providers (e.g., group practices, networks of individual practices,...

Washington State is in the midst of a multi-payer model home test with implications for the nascent national effort to construct new health care payment and delivery systems. The model homes are redesigned primary care medical practices. Their structural supports include additional upfront payments, potential shared savings, and other elements reflective of “accountable care.” Accountable care,...

On December 23, 2013, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced 123 new Medicare Shared Savings Program [1] (MSSP) Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). This represents the fourth round of MSSP participants, which, coupled with the Pioneer ACOs, brings the number of Medicare ACOs to 366. Some of these organizations were already known to be ACOs, including those that transferred ...

127 What people really want is health and not health care. We, as radiologists, must prepare ourselves to integrate not only current modalities but also molecular imaging and therapy into better utilization, diagnosis, and outcomes. Even if we succeed in these goals, we still must use the data to inform clinicians and improve their use of imaging. Even as radiology becomes less of an income cen...