Accountable Care Organizations

Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are healthcare organizations composed of physicians (both primary care and specialist), hospitals, and other health care providers who work in partnership to provide high value, patient-focused care for a defined patient population, to enhance the individual patient’s healthcare experience, to improve the overall health of the ACO’s defined patient population, and to reduce the cost of delivered care. They have been proposed as a new model for healthcare delivery in which both providers and payers share accountability for both the efficiency and the cost of delivered care. In this chapter, the various organizational and payment structures of ACO’s, the novel aspects of ACO models (such as shared savings), data on how ACO’s have impacted health care spending and quality, and currently unanswered questions about ACOs will be reviewed.