Health Care Cost

The ACO and Emerging Healthcare Delivery Coalition, an initiative of The American Journal of Managed Care, will host its first meeting on the West Coast April 30-May 1, 2015, at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, California. An outstanding group of faculty will take part as this multistakeholder group meets for the first time since the announcement of the ACO "Next Generation" initiative.

A late afternoon session on the first day of the 2015 Community Oncology Conference was a panel discussion called, "The Pathway Conundrum: How Many Do We Need and How Restrictive?"

One of the challenges providers will face in the new Oncology Care Model that CMS announced earlier this year is measuring quality and meeting quality standards under, according to Patti Forest, MD, MBA, senior medical director of network quality and performance at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina.

Adoption of alternative payment models that reduce the number of visits to the emergency department could cause unintended consequences for emergency care through a reduction in revenue, according to researchers at the Brookings Institute.

The authors report on a conceptual "specialty ACO" design in cardiology in which cardiology-specific historic spending targets are created to capture cardiovascular disease—related reimbursement and a quality measurement system is introduced.