Physicians, hospitals rush to form ACO alliances

Physician groups and hospitals are scrambling to set aside old rivalries and signing up as partners, in order to take advantage of incentives Medicare will give to Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), the Los Angeles Times reports.

The rush to join ACOs--partnerships between healthcare providers that are designed to cut the cost of caring for patients through better coordinated care--is being driven by provisions in the Affordable Care Act, signed into law in March, that say Medicare will reward ACOs for meeting certain, yet-to-be-determined quality benchmarks starting in Jan. 2012. ACOs are supposed to keep patients healthy and out of intensive care, and fear may be driving some to jump into the alliances.

"Some folks are beginning to say that if you're not an ACO, you may not get paid at all," Peter Maddox, senior vice president for strategy at Christus Health, a Catholic healthcare system, told the Times.

In San Antonio, three hospital systems are vying to create partnerships with local doctors who want to drop their private fee-for-service practices and sign on for paid positions with a hospital. At least six times a week, Patrick Carrier, a veteran hospital administrator who heads Christus Santa Rosa, a group of Catholic hospitals in San Antonio, tries to persuade doctors with private practices to in some way collaborate or trade in their autonomy for a solid pay package at Santa Rosa.

He told the Times that he ultimately wants to see the hospital system add 100 primary-care doctors to staff or in some other arrangement so that the hospital and doctors can jointly manage patient care and take advantage of the incentives Medicare and other insurers may offer.

To learn more:
- read the Los Angeles Times story 
- check out the Accountable Care Organization Q&A from CMS

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