More Docs Joining Forces in ACOs

SAN FRANCISCO -- The number of physician-led accountable care organizations (ACOs) has recently surpassed the number led by hospitals, becoming the largest backers of the payment and delivery model, an analysis showed.

Last March, hospital-led ACOs outnumbered those headed by doctors nearly two to one (91 to 45), said Neil Kirschner, PhD, ACP senior associate of regulatory and insurer affairs.

But after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) approved a new batch of ACOs earlier this year, physician-led organizations outpaced their hospital counterparts (202 to 189), he reported at the American College of Physicians (ACP) annual meeting.

ACOs are a fairly recent payment and delivery model in which a group of providers work in collaboration to deliver high quality, low-cost care to a defined group of patients. In the increasingly popular shared-savings model offered by CMS, ACOs have split up to half of the savings they generated the prior year. It's a dollar amount that's dependent on hitting quality measures.

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Source: MedPageToday.com