What a morning in Washington, DC! Hospital leaders and members of Congress, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, were on hand as the Premier healthcare alliance kicked off a special program that will help U.S. hospitals form Accountable Care Organizations, or ACOs.
Methodist Medical Center and Billings Clinic are among those helping to lead the way. Michael Bryant, CEO of Methodist Health Services Corporation, explains that "an ACO is a group of providers, in essence, who get paid a rate to take care of a defined group of patients – could be Medicare or cardiac patients, pulmonary patients, etc.," Bryant said. "It's possible to have different payment rates for different types of patients, which ultimately is what the government wants to do."
An article in the Peoria (IL) Journal Star explains how this new approach to healthcare will work:
With the ACO model, the healthcare teams will include doctors, nurses, case managers, social workers, long-term caregivers and an array of people who are now interacting with the patient in some way.
But they will not be operating in a vacuum as exists now under the fee-for-service model. Every interaction with the patient will be recorded in an electronic form that will be accessible by computer at every step of the health care journey, such as treatment, drugs prescribed and any follow-up treatment.
ACOs are designed to keep patients healthy and out of intensive care settings. The Premier healthcare alliance is working with hospitals to help them every step of the way, in order to transition hospitals over to this new model of care.
“I applaud the Premier healthcare alliance and its member health systems for their collaborative work to improve their patients’ care and reduce costs by offering patients access to a wide range of healthcare providers and settings,” said Senator Max Baucus.
Premier’s ACO collaborative will enable hospitals to test innovative models and share what works with policy makers so that when ACOs spread nationwide, hospitals will know they are effective.
Kester Freeman blogs regularly at Action for Better Healthcare.