Accountable Care Organizations Under Magnifying Glass

Calling into question whether value-based care will ever truly work, a recent report casts dark news for ACOs. As reported, nearly half of physicians participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) ACO in 2015 did not know if they could receive shared savings or faced downside risk, according to a study. Even as there are flaws with fee-for-service, there are legitimate questions being raised about the feasibility of implementing value-based health projects, as evident in this latest MSSP study. MSSP ACO Study The survey was conducted between September 2014 and April 2015 and asked more than 1,400 doctors participating in Pioneer, MSSP, and Advance Payment Model ACOs about their programs' incentive structure and effectiveness, among other topics. The survey found many doctors participating in each model were not aware how their respective incentive structures worked. Specifically: 5 percent of Advance Payment participants did not know if they or their practice faced downside risk and 16.1 percent said they did face downside risk; 5 percent of MSSP participants did not know if they or their practice faced downside risk and 20.6 percent said they did face downside risk; and 7 percent of Pioneer participants said they did not know if they or their practice faced downside risk and 19.8 percent inaccurately said they did not face downside risk. Additionally, the survey found that similar proportions of physicians did not know whether they were eligible for s...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs