Accountable Care Collaboratives in the news

Medicare ACO participation will be determined by factors outside CMS' control, despite improved rule
Wes Champion, senior vice president with the Premier healthcare alliance, explains that the final shared savings rule has been significantly improved. In fact, the final regulations will allow for a range of creative interventions.
Full story; Becker's Hospital Review; 11/4/11

ACO final rules ease requirements, reduce risk
Officials for the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and the Premier healthcare alliance, a quality and purchasing group representing 2,500 hospitals, say they think the numerous revisions will make more hospitals and doctors willing to partner to coordinate care and save Medicare spending.
Full story; HealthLeaders; 10/21/11

Bringing ACOs back to life
Amanda Forster, senior director of public affairs, Premier said, "Our initial interpretation is that the program is greatly improved and we would expect more organizations to be interested in pursuing an ACO."
Full story; Hospitals & Health Networks; 10/21/11

Medicare relaxes rules for coordinated care
The transition to a new type of healthcare payment system will take time, said Susan DeVore, president and chief executive of the Premier healthcare alliance, a group that represents nearly 40 percent of the hospitals in the country and helps providers improve their patient care and finances.
Full story; Reuters; 10/20/11

Health rules prod U.S. hospitals to form networks for care to trim costs
Blair Childs, senior vice president at Premier, an alliance of 2,500 not-for-profit hospital systems, said many would pursue joint ventures because of the simpler federal requirements and reduced risk in the rule. "I think we're going to see a lot of systems step up and do this," he said.
Full story; Bloomberg; 10/20/11

HHS releases final regulations for ACOs
Blair Childs, senior vice president of public affairs at Premier, an alliance that has 77 integrated health systems that are interested in forming ACOs, said the new rule is going to have a big impact on the private market as well. "The biggest impediment historically is that the old Medicare (fee-for-service) program caused people to stay in the old world" of payments, he said.
Full story; Kaiser Health News; 10/20/11

Early ACO rule analysis from Premier
Provider alliance Premier has released a statement supporting multiple provisions of the final Medicare Shared Savings rule, while also flagging concerns with certain provisions.
Full story; Health Data Management; 10/20/11

ACOs - Tastes like chicken?
Premier members come to my mind as ready-made for quickly forming the kinds of ad hoc networks with consolidated reporting required of ACOs and envisioned in the PPACA.
Full story; Healthcare Matters; 10/19/11

Poster boys take a pass on pioneer ACO program
Susan DeVore, president and CEO of the Premier healthcare alliance, explains that many hospitals are choosing among the many options for forming integrated systems, including the Pioneer and Shared Savings Program, the Physician Group Practice Demonstration, medical homes and arrangements with private payers.
Full story; Kaiser Health News; 9/14/11

Core components of Premier's accountable care collaboratives
Premier is creating a learning environment that supports more than 95 health systems which represent 450 hospitals that have joined its accountable care collaboratives.
Full story; Fierce Healthcare; 8/28/11

ACOs: Risk or reward?
Keith Figlioli, senior vice president with Premier, discusses laying the IT foundation for ACOs. For some, it presents daunting challenges.
Full story; Healthcare Informatics; 7/19/11

Six target markets for accountable care partnerships
Last year, all of healthcare was abuzz over accountable care organizations. This year, the new fad seems to be tearing the concept apart before it even has a chance to develop, says Joseph F. Damore and Barbara Gray of the Premier healthcare alliance.
Full story; HealthLeaders Media; 7/14/11

The transformative role of healthcare IT in accountable care frameworks
"Although few have actually 'seen' an accountable care organization, we certainly have heard a lot about them, particularly since the Affordable Care Act was passed just over a year ago," says Keith J. Figlioli, senior vice president of Healthcare Informatics at Premier.
Full story; HFMA; 7/8/11

Up to 14 Premier members may apply for pioneer ACO, boding well for program
Members of Premier's accountable care collaborative met with CMS officials this week to discuss the Pioneer ACO demonstration, and as many as 14 of those health systems are expected to submit letters of intent for the demo, which accounts for about half the number of Pioneer ACOs that CMS officials hope to have up and running by fall.
Full story (subscription required); Inside Health Policy; 6/30/11

Health IT key to healthcare system reform
According to Keith Figlioli, senior vice president with Premier, the proposed rule governing accountable care organizations is a "no-win" for healthcare providers because the savings resulting from forming ACOs will be offset by the extra work required for reporting on more than 65 measures.
Full story; iHealthBeat; 6/30/11

Step-by-step quality improvement measures can ease ACO implementation
Richard Bankowitz, MD, MBA, FACP, chief medical officer with Premier, discusses the importance of healthcare data.
Full story; Fierce Healthcare; 6/28/11

Why ACOs are like Oakland
Influential close readers of the legislation, however, like Premier Inc., a Charlotte, N.C.-based, knowledge-sharing and group-contracting alliance of some 2,500 hospitals nationwide, are lobbying for a number of adjustments before the ACO experiment goes live.
Full story; Hospitals & Health Networks; 6/21/11

Proposed ACO rules attract public gripes
Blair Childs, senior vice president with Premier, says the proposed ACO rule will discourage ACO development, which represents one of the best hopes for coordinating care in the fee-for-service system, improving quality and reducing costs.
Full story; HealthLeaders Media; 6/10/11

Provider groups support ACO concept, oppose implementation regulations
The Premier healthcare alliance is among those who sent CMS comment letters that were supportive of ACOs but critical of implementation plans.
Full story; McKnight's; 6/8/11

Premier urges CMS to steer away from micromanagement approach to ACOs
Premier recommends that, rather than dictating what future ACOs look like, CMS should articulate what they should not look like and provide general parameters around the legal boundaries of ACO operations.
Full story; Becker's Hospital Review; 6/3/11

ACOs: The models, the reality
A number of health plans are contracting with health systems, physician-led groups, physician-hospital organizations and other provider organizations to deliver accountable care with a shared savings model, says Barbara Gray, MBA, RN, vice president of the Accountable Care Collaborative at Premier.
Full story; Cardiovascular Business News; 5/23/11

Administration offers new path for ACOs
Blair Childs, senior vice president with Premier, explains that there is still dissatisfaction with ACO rules that need to be addressed.
Full story; Kaiser Health News; 5/18/11

Not ready for takeoff?
Susan DeVore, president and CEO the Premier healthcare alliance, discusses financial obstacles that could "threaten the viability" of accountable care organizations.
Full story; Modern Healthcare; 5/17/11

Six target markets for ACO-type partnerships
As finance leaders consider whether to apply to the Medicare Shared Savings Program, they should evaluate the application of accountable care principles to six other markets for value-based contracting.
Full story; Healthcare Financial Management Association; 4/22/11

New ACO rules outline gains and risks for doctors, hospitals
Blair Childs, senior vice president with Premier, comments on the proposed ACO rules. He praises many aspects of the rules but notes the need for a higher share of the Medicare savings, for some ACOS, particularly smaller ones.
Full story; Kaiser Health News; 4/1/11

Catching the Tiger (IT and accountable care)
Keith Figlioli, senior vice president of healthcare informatics at the Premier healthcare alliance, explains how important healthcare IT will be as accountable care models are rolled out.
Full story; Healthcare Informatics; 3/25/11

ACOs, how do you get there from here?
Danielle Lloyd, senior director of reimbursement policy for Premier, discusses ACOs. Lloyd recommends that organizations conduct simulations of various payment models to determine what level of shared payment and risk is right for them.
Full story; Hospitals & Health Networks; 3/8/11

From volume to value: Hospital leads on community health
CaroMont Health CEO Valinda Rutledge discusses how her system is working with the Premier healthcare alliance on innovative wellness and population health campaigns, and preparing for possible participation in an ACO.
Full story; Hospitals & Health Networks; 3/7/11

Premier releases 'road map' to develop IT capabilities for ACOs
The Premier Accountable Care Implementation Collaborative has released a road map for IT systems to back up accountable care organizations through five evolutionary stages as they become more sophisticated and effective.
Full story; Becker's Hospital Review; 2/22/11

Sebelius pushes ACOs as Medicaid cost-cutting option in advance of CMS rule
An executive with Texas Health Resources comments on the idea of having Medicaid participate in ACOs. Texas Health Resources is part of the Premier Accountable Care Implementation Collaborative.
Full story (subscription required); Inside Health Policy; 2/9/11

Policy watch: All eyes on CMS
Keith Figlioli, senior vice president of healthcare informatics at Premier healthcare alliance explains that meaningful use requirements and the ACO model are not well aligned. Meaningful use is very EMR-centric, but what works within the four walls of the hospital may not be what you need to manage the health of a population.
Full story; Healthcare Informatics; 2/2/11

Five ways to put people first in an ACO
By moving toward accountable care, we can transform care delivery. Based on lessons learned from the Accountable Care Implementation Collaborative, Premier has developed five steps to putting people first in healthcare.
Full story; Becker's Hospital Review; 1/31/11

Healthcare: End the 'perverse incentives'
Premier President and CEO Susan DeVore explains in an article for Bloomberg BusinessWeek that ACOs propose to fix a system of perverse incentives. Rather than paying for treatments when people get sick, caregivers in an ACO would be held accountable for keeping patients well. Their reward is a portion of the funds that are saved when people improve their health and require less care.
Full story; Bloomberg BusinessWeek; 1/24/11

Premier: Balance patient choice with letting ACOs market to beneficiaries
People should know they are in accountable care organizations and they should be allowed to opt out of them, even though those who don't opt out are not required to use doctors in the ACO network, Premier is telling CMS. In return, a Premier source says, CMS should let ACOs market to beneficiaries once they've opted in, as part of a bid to keep patients in network, and should be allowed to monitor the care of patients in ACOs.
Full story (subscription required); Inside Health Policy; 1/21/11

ACOs forging the links
Wes Champion, senior vice president with Premier explains that if your hospital's competitive situation allows you to consider an ACO strategy, look at your physician alignment and identify the gaps. Hospitals need to prepare now for payment changes.
Full story; Hospitals & Health Networks; 1/13/11

Driving population health through accountable care organizations
The Premier healthcare alliance describes each component of its ACO implementation collaborative in this report published in Health Affairs. Members of the collaborative have made specific recommendations to lawmakers and federal agencies that will help speed the development of ACOs.
Full story; Health Affairs; 1/6/11

Premier offers ACO recommendations to CMS
Premier healthcare alliance has written a letter to CMS with recommendations for ACOs, including the immediate allowance of multiple payment models.
Full story; Becker's Hospital Review; 12/3/10

Embracing incentives for efficient healthcare
Efforts to teach providers about ACOs, backed by researchers at the Brookings Institution, the Dartmouth Institute and Premier, have drawn about 180 participants so far, including hospital systems and doctor groups.
Full story; The Wall Street Journal; 11/29/10

Working with ACOs
Richard Bankowitz, chief medical officer at the Premier healthcare alliance, explains how ACOs are meant to provide more coordinated, higher quality healthcare more cost-effectively, while expanding access to services to an estimated 32 million Americans.
Full story; Healthcare Executive Insight; 11/17/10

Leadership in the era of reform
Susan DeVore, president and CEO of Premier, notes that to be successful, hospitals must develop strong ties with payers and providers of all types in the community. Whether or not hospitals participate in an accountable care organization, they must own the health of the community outside of the acute care space.
Full story; Hospitals & Health Networks; 11/11/10

While health reform faces challenge, repeal of ACOs unlikely
"ACOs were actually a Republican idea," says Blair Childs, senior vice president with Premier. "They were the product of a bipartisan Congressional committee looking at healthcare reform in 2009."
Full story; Becker's Hospital Review; 10/27/10

10 recommendations on ACO regulations from Premier's collaborative
Based on experiences of the Premier ACO Collaborative, involving more than 80 hospitals, Premier has proposed a variety of regulations for accountable care organizations in a letter to CMS, according to a report by Premier.
Full story; Becker's Hospital Review; 10/25/10

Can we get it right this time?
"Today, our healthcare system focuses on caring for the sick and rewards healthcare providers within their silos of care, i.e. physician offices, hospitals, nursing homes, and so on," says Wes Champion, senior vice president, Premier Consulting Solutions, Charlotte, N.C. "This reality contributes to inefficiency, waste and poor care coordination. Premier has created two 'collaboratives' designed to help members explore and set up accountable care organizations.
Full story (pages 22-31); The Journal of Healthcare Contracting; 10/10 issue

An ACO blueprint
CMS won't say exactly what constitutes an accountable care organization for another month or two, but the National Committee for Quality Assurance has floated its blueprint for identifying organizations that can realize the immense hopes for the delivery model: better health, better patient experiences and lower costs. The Premier healthcare alliance, which launched its own ACO pilot programs in May and June that include some 75 healthcare systems, said it would submit comments to the NCQA's draft standards.
Full story (subscription required); Modern Healthcare; 10/25/10

Premier comments on Medicare ACO program
Premier has submitted policy recommendations to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services regarding the structure and design of the Medicare accountable care organization program, mandated to begin by 2012.
Full story; Healthcare Finance News; 10/22/10

5 ways to make the pay-for-performance transition smoother
Join other community or national hospitals in cost and quality improvement collaboratives that share data and benchmark best practices between facilities, says Richard Bankowitz, MD, enterprise-wide chief medical officer of the Premier healthcare alliance. Hospitals in a collaborative share their benchmarking data and learn, among other things, how their physicians compare with others.
Full story; Becker's Hospital Review; 10/18/10

10 key concepts on building an ACO
Aria Health is part of Premier's ACO Initiative. Aria Health points out 10 key concepts that are important when building an ACO.
Full story; Becker's Hospital Review; 10/14/10

Hospitals are predicting, adapting to change
Premier's ACO collaborative will build the knowledge and expertise needed to transform a healthcare system from one that treats illness to one that delivers health and wellness, improving healthcare outcomes at the most cost-effective price for patients and taxpayers, says Susan DeVore, president and CEO of Premier.
Full story; HealthLeaders Media; 10/14/10

Hospital strategies to support accountable care
The Premier healthcare alliance has launched two ACO Collaboratives. Hear how Premier members are getting ready to launch ACOs and how Premier is helping to facilitate the process.
Full story; HFMA; 10/11/10

Weighing the benefits and the risks of ACOs
Public and private sectors have shown interest in ACOs. The Premier ACO collaborative was launched in May and has two tracks. The first is an implementation cohort that has already developed the foundational elements necessary to execute an ACO strategy. The second is a readiness cohort designed to help health systems develop the foundational elements.
Full story; HFMA; 9/1/10

LifeBridge joins Premier healthcare alliance
LifeBridge Health has joined more than 40 other health systems across the country in an initiative to improve community health. The Baltimore health system joined the Premier healthcare alliance's Accountable Care Organization Readiness Collaborative. The program encourages participating hospitals to lower healthcare costs by coordinating care between physicians.
Full story; Baltimore Business Journal; 8/13/10

More than 40 health systems join Premier healthcare alliance Accountable Care Organization Readiness Collaborative to improve community health
More than 40 leading health systems have joined the Premier healthcare alliance's Accountable Care Organization (ACO) Readiness Collaborative. Working together, participating health systems will develop the organization, skills, team and operational capabilities necessary to become effective ACOs capable of lowering costs by improving care coordination, efficiency, quality and patient satisfaction.
Full story; Premier website; 8/12/10

New collaboratives getting health systems ready for ACOs
Blair Childs, senior vice president with Premier, explains how Premier's new accountable care collaboratives are helping health systems get ready to launch accountable care organizations.
Full story; Becker's Hospital Review; 8/9/10

Premier's ACO collaborative: Interview with Katherine Schneider of AtlantiCare
Katherine Schneider, MD, vice president of health engagement at AtlantiCare in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., discusses her health system's role in Premier's new ACO Collaborative.
Full story; Becker's Hospital Review; 8/4/10

Pilots key to ACO implementation
In May, the Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System began a recruiting campaign to tempt private practice doctors to join the accountable care organization (ACO) it founded in April. According to The Detroit News, the health system sent 2,000 letters to private practice doctors who have admitting privileges at its hospitals, hoping to recruit them. Premier, a healthcare performance-improvement alliance, is working on an even larger scale.
Full story; Managed Healthcare Executive; 8/1/10

Putting people first: Value-driven healthcare
Wes Champion, senior vice president of Premier Consulting Solutions, discusses value-driven healthcare. He says few would disagree that something must be done to rein in healthcare costs, expand access, promote wellness and improve quality. ACOs present an exciting and fundamental shift in healthcare, a change that will touch virtually everyone providing, receiving or funding care.
Full story; Hospitals & Health Networks; 7/30/10

Health care law's accountable care groups attract rare bipartisan favor
In some respects, the health care overhaul law is getting a bad rap when critics in Congress say it fails to address rising health care costs. Not only does the law launch experiments to test possible solutions to what everyone acknowledges is a complex problem – it also gives the Health and Human Services secretary the power to push a redesign of how health care is delivered in the United States. Case in point: the secretary's new authority to contract widely starting in 2012 with entities called "accountable care organizations."
Full story; The Commonwealth Fund; 7/16/10

Accountable care organizations take shape
A group of 19 health systems is joining together to share best practices, coordinate care, and improve quality, explains Dr. Nicholas Wolter, CEO of the Billings Clinic.
Full story (video); Global Medical News Network; 7/12/10

Alternative to HMOs coordinates treatment delivery
Two Northeast Ohio health systems are part of a push to create a new way of coordinating care for patients and getting paid for those services. Summa Health System in Akron and University Hospitals in Cleveland are working with the Premier healthcare alliance to each develop an "accountable care organization," or ACO for short.
Full story; Ohio.com; 7/5/10

A brave new world of connectivity
In part two of a special report, Keith Figlioli, senior vice president of healthcare informatics at Premier discusses the company's Accountable Care Organization (ACO) Collaboratives program and Premier's active role in policy reform.
Full story; Healthcare Informatics; 6/25/10

CMS urged to adopt 'all payer' ACO model
The hope is that the private groups and the Premier ACO collaborative, will be able to develop the delivery system reforms as the Medicare provisions are implemented.
Full story (subscription required); Inside Health Policy; 6/11/10

Cover story: Good fit? Reform links payment to quality
Hospitals are likely to be continuously challenged by changes in the value-based purchasing (VBP) measures, says Blair Childs, senior vice president of public affairs for Premier healthcare alliance. "New measures will be piloted by CMS in the Hospital Compare website and moved into VBP, so keep focused on the Hospital Compare measures," he advises. But because VBP is a zero-sum game, hospitals will have to compete to maintain full payment.
Full story; Hospitals & Health Networks; 6/9/10

Aria Health joins new accountable care organizations (ACOs) initiative under healthcare reform law
Aria Health has joined 18 other healthcare organizations nationwide to launch Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), a collaborative effort designed to implement essential healthcare reforms to deliver high-quality, patient-centered care.
Full story; PR Newswire; 5/26/10

Billings Clinic joins new accountable care collaborative to incent healthy outcomes, efficiencies and avoided cost
Billings Clinic today announced that it will work as part of a new collaborative to launch Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). These ACOs will implement essential healthcare reforms to deliver high-quality, patient-centered care.
Full story; Billings website; 5/20/10

New Accountable Care Organization Collaboratives will focus on creating healthier communities
The Premier healthcare alliance and 19 of its leading health system members have launched two Accountable Care Organization (ACO) Collaboratives designed to evolve today's sick care system to one that improves health in local communities. Working together, participating health systems will create the first ACOs in the market, accepting accountability for the health of more than 1.2 million patients and committing to lower costs by improving care coordination, efficiency, quality and patient satisfaction.
Full story; Premier website; 5/20/10

 

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