Are Medicare ACOs Gaining a Foothold?

This blog has never gotten very excited by Medicare’s Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). ACOs are risk-sharing arrangements between Medicare and providers, which are supposed to save money through efficiency. As a concept, they are fine – certainly an improvement over the incumbent, Soviet-style fee schedule. However, it is unlikely that the government has the incentives to get the risk-sharing incentives right.

I had anticipated that ACOs might end “with a whimper.” The Centers for Medicare & Medicare Services (CMS) have released results of Pioneer ACO’s third year of operation and 2014 results for Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) ACOs which launched in 2012 through 2014. While ACOs are hardly taking off like the administration hoped, they seem to have gained a foothold.

Read the entire entry at NCPA's Health Policy Blog.