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
Related Stories:
Lawmakers praise ACOs, promise to help overcome obstacles
ACO approval deadline approaching faster than you might think
Comments
"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."
From a patient's standpoint, I don't really like this idea of the hospital and the doctor on the same side against the patient, dividing up the money. The biggest conflict of interest in medical care today...corporate medical practice by employed physicians...and nobody is bringing the issue up...instead, we get endless lectures on the evils of physicians seeing pharmaceutical reps and getting free pens.
The reason the government likes this idea is that it puts physicians in the hospital's pockets, and the hospital's will be in the government's pocket because they will be the ones receiving the money. The goal is not quality patient care...it is controlled and rationed patient care. A doctor cannot serve two masters...but that is what an employed physician is doing. Guess what...the doctor will end up serving the master who writes the check.
What kind of doctor do you use, a psychiatrist? If you feel that all doctors and hospitals are ganging up on you, go be a medical tourist overseas.
Hospitals are run by businessmen and lawyers. they are not run by doctors. In 1978, the Federal Trade Commission with the help of some big law firms decided to prosecute doctors and remove them from the practice of running medicine so that businessmen and lawyers could skim profits off the top.
30 years later that process is now complete and physicians have no clout whatsoever, since they are required to work but have little ability to get paid enough to cover their expenses without some help from the businessmen who have skimmed all the profits.
Big law firms like Horty Spinger and mattern and Davis Wight and Tremaine have aided hospitals for years in stacking the deck against physicians. Unlike the class of altruistic physicians, hospital administrators were not trained and selected for alturism, but for ability to skin off a profit.
American capitalism at its purest is what has made health care disintegrate.
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