Nowadays nearly each part of human life is undergoing intensive development and health care organizations are not an exception. Due to its importance for people all over the whole world its growth is even more fasten than any other.
One of the innovations that have appeared recently on the horizon of up-to-date medical field is the notion of accountable health care organizations or ACO. Despite the misleading belief in novelty of this term, it is similar to the definition of the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) which was very popular in 1970s. As well as HMO, ACO has on purpose to create an entity that will provide people with good and thorough medical care. But initially this term was deliberately used by Elliot Fisher - Director of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice - in 2006 during the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission meeting where this term was finally coined. After that popularity of ACO policy started to spread all over the medical community and in 2009 it was included in the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
In general ACO is a group of health care providing organizations, hospitals and doctors who on their own accord make highly qualified medical care more available for their patients. The main aim of this organization is to ensure that people, especially those with chronic illnesses and constant pain, receive expert treatment and all the necessary medicine at the right time.
Since March 2011, all the ACOs are under the Medicare Shared Savings Program, one of the branches of the US Department of Health and Human Services, which stipulates the voluntary health care providers to participate in ACOs. The main payer is the Medicare, organization that represents the federal government. Also to the list of payers can be included private insurances and employer-purchased insurance.
Proponents hope that ACOs ensure those doctors, hospitals, clinics and other health care providers will work together more effectively to improve the quality of treatment and lower the costs.
Works Sited
“Accountable Care Organizations (ACO).” Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.
Battani, Steinberg, Moore, Viglucci. “Accountable Care Organizations. Core Competencies and Potential Pitfalls” National Health University., 16 June 2011.Print
Fisher, Shortell. “Accountable Care Organizations” The journal of American Medical Associations., 20 Oct. 2010. Web. 20 November 2014.
