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Accountable care organizations (ACO) emerge each year aiming to improve care quality while controlling rising health care costs. This cross-sectional study examined whether ACO arrangements within a Preferred Provider Organization and a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) effected patient experience. A modified Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems ACO survey was used to assess care domain differences overall and by product. The association between ACO and non-ACO populations and items in each significant care domain, flu vaccination, and delayed and emergency department care are explored using multivariable logistic regression. Accountable care organizations patients were more likely to report it was easy to get a specialist appointment (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 1.54; 95% CI = 1.11-2.13), less likely to report visiting the emergency department for care (AOR, 0.70; 95% CI = 0.55-0.90) and communicating with their provider using technology (AOR, 0.79; 95% CI = 0.65-0.96). Reported experience differed for Access to Specialists between ACO and non-ACO groups among overall and HMO respondents (79.4% vs 74.7% and 79.9% vs 75.5%, P < .05, respectively). The ACO patient experience was not substantially better. Strategies incorporating satisfaction and experience, whether linked to contracts or not, should be encouraged given ACOs goal to optimize patient care. Survey instruments must be improved to capture nuances of provider care and patient bond that is vital in ACO integrated systems.

The Health Care Systems Research Network (HCSRN; formerly HMO Research Network) held its annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia, in April 2016. A consortium of research organizations affiliated with 20 large health care delivery systems, the HCSRN met for the 22nd consecutive year to report on scientific achievements, develop and share skills and best practices, and promote new research collaborations. The 2016 conference, with a theme of “Advancing Population Health: New Models and the Role of Research,” was co-hosted on behalf of HCSRN by Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation and Henry Ford Health System’s Public Health Sciences Department. The 350 conference attendees included member investigators, research staff, federal funders, other research sponsors and a variety of existing and prospective collaborative partners. Key sessions reflecting the theme included plenary panels with a research focus on patient-centered care and population health management, a full-day symposium on precision oncology and a half-day patient-engaged research training workshop.

IntroductionDelivering child health services through integrated child health events (ICHEs) has been a useful and popular strategy implemented in many in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) to accelerate the reduction of child mortality. The study aims to portray the scope of ICHEs and examine the association between the number of child health-nutrition interventions and types of ICHE packages delivered through these campaigns with vitamin A supplementation (VAS) and measles vaccination.MethodsSecondary data analysis was conducted using Unicef global campaign database (1999–2010), where 597 ICHEs from 76 countries were analysed. Panel random effects regression models were used to explore the association between the number of interventions and coverage for VAS and measles vaccination, and non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test to explore the association between different intervention packages and VAS coverage.ResultsAn average of 100 ICHEs were conducted per year between 2005 and 2010, highest in sub-Saharan Africa (60%). By 2010, 40 ICHEs out of 66 (60%) across 24 countries delivered 5 or more interventions during 1 ICHE. No statistically significant effect of the number of ICHE interventions on VAS coverage was found (−0·76, p=0·185). There was a small significant effect on measles coverage (−1·81, p=0·057), which was not robust to model specifications removing outlier observations with measles coverage lower than 40%. The Kruskal-Wallis test did not suggest a significant association between different intervention packages and VAS coverage at 5% significance level (p=0·07).ConclusionICHEs were found to be a widely used strategy to deliver essential child health-nutrition interventions in LMICs. ICHEs appear to represent a commonly used platform with the capacity to incorporate multiple interventions without compromising coverage of some key interventions as VAS and measles vaccination. More research is required to better understand what operational factors may affect the coverage outcomes delivered together through ICHEs.