TOPIC:
So-called "accountable care organizations" or ACOs might change the way that the agency running Medicare does business. An article in the Indiana Business Journal explains that the new health reform law requires the agency to sign new "shared savings" contracts with ACOs and gives examples of how these organizations work. ACOs can begin doing business with Medicare in January 2012.
Because ACOs must include primary care physicians to serve Medicare patients, notes the article, Indianapolis-area hospitals are scrambling to integrate their services and those of hundreds of local physicians into "clinically integrated" networks so they'll be eligible to bid on one of the new Medicare contracts. The article gives a number of examples of how these relationships are progressing.
There is a certain amount of pressure for doctors to sign on with a hospital system sooner rather than later. According to the article, "Physicians don't all have to sell their practices to hospitals to join these networks; they can sign affiliation agreements that leave them independent or form a joint venture with a hospital system. But experts say the pressure is on physicians to choose a hospital system as soon as possible—even though the rules of accountable care organizations and shared savings contracts have not all been written."
http://www.ibj.com/new-medicare-contracts-drive-health-care-hookups/PARAMS/article/21197
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Susan DeVore, Premier Healthcare Alliance
Expertise: Group purchasing, healthcare quality/finance/technology/economics/supply chain, GPO, safety, pay for performance, reimbursement, Medicare, HAIs