Accountable Care

The Massachusetts hospitals follow the exit of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire last month.

A key strategy for Medicare is encouraging doctors, hospitals and other health care providers to form accountable care organizations (ACOs) to coordinate beneficiaries' care and provide services more efficiently.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center will abandon the Pioneer Accountable Care Organization program, the system confirmed Tuesday, after losing more than $3 million over the past two years in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid model.

Instead of taking on hundreds of changes, physician groups often only have the bandwidth to implement a few meaningful and targeted changes.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Tuesday launched a new accountable care model for kidney care companies, linking dialysis facilities, nephrologists and other providers in more than a dozen ACOs that will share in the risk associated with treating Americans with end-stage renal disease.

One of the main ways the Affordable Care Act seeks to reduce health care costs is by encouraging doctors, hospitals and other health care providers to form networks that coordinate patient care and become eligible for bonuses when they deliver that care more efficiently.

Although many organizations participating in the Medicare Shared Savings and the Pioneer Accountable Care Organization programs failed to generate savings in 2014, Navigant Healthcare consultant Paul Keckley thinks the programs are here to stay despite several flaws.

Another Pioneer ACO participant, Beacon Health in Maine, is considering exiting the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services program after being hit with millions in penalties two years in a row.

Nine ACOs that partner with CHS generated $27 million in the Medicare Shared Savings Program.

Facing losses for two years in a row, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is considering pulling out of Pioneer ACO model, according to Dr. Robert A. Greene, executive vice president and chief population health management officer for the New Hampshire-based accountable care organization.