An ACO is a group of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers who have come together voluntarily to give coordinated high quality care to their Medicare patients. At the heart of each patient’s care is a primary care physician.
ACO members share financial and medical responsibility / risk for providing that coordinated care, the goal of which is to limit unnecessary spending while ensuring patients - especially the chronically ill - get the right care at the right time. The ACO does the billing for all participants under the ACO’s single tax ID.
Two reasons: (1) when it does what it’s supposed to do, ACOs succeed in delivering high-quality care while spending health care dollars more economically, and (2) Medicare is steering (encouraging) patients toward healthcare resources that are part of an ACO.
Ultimately, the reward for being part of an ACO comes in the form of sharing in the savings it achieves for Medicare over what Medicare would have spent on those patients if they weren’t within the ACO’s care.
Each party in the ACO needs a certified EHR that can be interfaced with the ACO’s PM system, and other EHRs and systems. The MedicsCloud EHR from ADS is ideal for ACO interfacing and reporting
Complete the Request Information form for more details on our Medics solutions for initiatives and incentives, then visit https://innovation.cms.gov/ for periodic updates on ACOs.