In the environment of healthcare, regardless of the nation or region, concentrated team efforts to provide higher quality patient care are always better than institutions trying to do everything on their own. Organizations and other institutions of healthcare that voluntarily come together in order to provide coordinated, high quality care efforts to their patients are, today, known as accountable care organizations, or ACO\u2019s. \u201cACO has become the three-letter health acronym of the year, if not the decade.\u201d\u2014 Steve Lieberman, a visiting scholar at the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform<\/p>\n
ACO\u2019s have been becoming a widely notorious and popularized thing, and the term itself became, not surprisingly, extremely widespread throughout 2011, when the idea itself only took up about seven pages of the huge Affordable Care Act. As the infancy phase of this collective care strategy begins to distance itself, its young and middle childhood is starting to build the foundation on which the rest of its longevity will rest. As mentioned in said healthcare bill, the primary duties of ACO\u2019s include managing the care needs of a minimum of five thousand healthcare beneficiaries for a minimum of three years. It primarily functions in that it \u201cbrings together the different component parts of care for the patient \u2013 primary care, specialists, hospitals, home health care, etc. \u2013 and ensure that all of the parts work well together,\u201d according to NPR.org.<\/p>\n
Read More:\u00a0Features to look out for in an EHR\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n One of the aims and overall goals that ACO\u2019s are attempting to achieve is the localization and centralization of healthcare for patients. One of the noticeable issues our healthcare system faces today is quite the opposite: people are getting their care separately and in chunks, having to assemble their own services themselves instead of already being provided the full package in a more direct way. In order for the latter to become a reality, though, ACO\u2019s have got to prove their working abilities. They need to illustrate that their services do indeed work better and cost less in order to persuade paying patients to subscribe to them.<\/p>\n Another larger and big-picture-contributing solution that ACO\u2019s provide, a large reason as to why they were included in the bill in the first place, is the money-saving benefits. The current generation is going to severely feel the hard-hitting effects that this nation\u2019s high healthcare costs are going to freely and without-care administer, and if this doesn\u2019t call for healthcare transformation, I don\u2019t know what does. With the combination of efforts and financial resources that ACO\u2019s offer, there\u2019s more room for savings, as long as quality targets are met. Of course, this strategy isn\u2019t perfect, and there is the risk of some providers losing money because of the multifaceted, yet singular approach ACO\u2019s take. If one department is doing well whilst the others are not for whatever that reason may be, the department doing well is going to be keeping the largest portion of the savings. It\u2019s not an overly complicated concept by any means, and, perhaps, its simplicity has more to offer than other healthcare solutions have in the past.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the question of how ACO\u2019s would primarily receive the money they need that would constitute said portion of savings. America\u2019s Medicare possesses the traditional fee-for-service payment system, which consists of patients paying a certain sum of money, with or without the help of health insurance, in order to cover the cost of the healthcare service they received. This, in turn, means that doctors and hospitals get paid more when they have to administer more services to the patient, which, as another result, drives up costs. ACO\u2019s would not rid of fee-for-service per say, but give healthcare providers more motive to offer their patients more savings by offering bonuses when providers lower their costs whilst simultaneously keeping quality at the highest it can be. Because ACO\u2019s are a method of\u00a0population health management<\/a>, they work best when they aim for disease prevention, maintaining healthy populations, treating patients with chronic illnesses carefully, and, generally, keeping people out of the hospital altogether. By successfully managing such tasks, ACO\u2019s would receive the most amount of money at the least expense.<\/p>\n The idea of centralized healthcare efforts that aim to reduce costs, increase quality of care, and save the government money will, most likely, seem appetizing to most at face-value, most especially here in the United States, a nation that is desperately screaming for healthcare reforms<\/a>\u00a0and system substitutions. However, just like everything else, ACO\u2019s are not a flawless idea. Our nation\u2019s healthcare system has a tendency to rapidly and, sometimes blindly, move towards new ideas without working out the kinks and other possible outcomes they may have.\u00a0\u201cThere is always a risk that these ACO\u2019s will be formed with the aim of exercising market power which could offset the savings from Medicare, resulting in increased healthcare costs\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n