Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Commonwealth Fund Finds Hospitals in Accountable Care Organizations Are Larger and in Urban Areas
A new study comparing accountable care organizations (ACOs) that include hospitals in their networks to those that do not finds hospitals that are in urban areas, are nonprofit, or have a relatively small share of Medicare patients are more likely to participate in ACOs than other hospitals. Whether an ACO includes hospitals does not appear to affect its capacity to manage hospital-related aspects of patient care.
In an attempt to curtail needless spending and improve care coordination, many hospitals have teamed up with accountable care organizations (ACOs) over the past decade. Although more than half of ACO provider networks now include hospitals, the jury is out on the value ACOs derive from hospital participation. Commonwealth Fund–supported researchers used quantitative and qualitative analysis to assess the differences between ACOs with and without participating hospitals. . .