Accountable Care Organization (ACO)

See the following -

Seven Ways For Health Services Research To Lead Health System Change

Joel Kupersmith and David Atkins | Health Affairs Blog | May 30, 2013

With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act now at hand — and with it, the formation of accountable care organizations (ACOs) — health services research (HSR) has an especially important role to play.  As ACOs take steps that will substantially change health care delivery, the ability to measure and improve health system performance and acquire this data efficiently will be in greater demand.  Is HSR up to the challenge? Read More »

Small Massachusetts HIT Conference Returns to Big Issues in Health Care

Andy Oram | O'Reilly Radar | February 6, 2012

The big achievement in Massachusetts, going into the conference today, was a recent agreement between the state's major insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and the 800-pound gorilla of the state's health care market, Partners HealthCare System. Read More »

Technical Requirements For Coordinating Care In An Accountable Care Organization

Andy Oram | O'Reilly Radar | August 10, 2012

The concept of an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) reflects modern hopes to improve medicine and cut costs in the health system. Tony McCormick, a pioneer in the integration of health care systems, describes what is needed on the ground to get doctors working together. Read More »

The 'Post EHR' Era

John Halamka | Healthcare IT News | February 12, 2013

At BIDMC, we've already achieved 100% EHR adoption and 90% Meaningful Use attestation among our clinician community. Now that the foundation is laid, I believe our next body of work is to craft the technology and workflow solutions which will be hallmarks of the "post EHR" era. Read More »

The (So Far) Failed Promise Of Electronic Medical Records

Megan McArdle | The Daily Beast | January 21, 2013

Remember how Obamacare was going to "Bend the cost curve" for health care spending? That was OMB director Peter Orszag, back when Obamacare was being debated.  There were a number of theories about how it would accomplish this... Read More »

The ACO Failure Hypothesis: Likely But Not Inevitable

Les Funtleyder | The Health Care Blog | April 28, 2013

We recently participated in a program at Columbia Business School’s Healthcare Program on whether ACOs (Accountable Care Organizations) will fail. For those of you that don’t know, ACOs are one of the structures promulgated by PPACA (aka Obamacare) designed to encourage better cost control and quality improvement in the healthcare system. Read More »

The End of Health Insurance Companies

Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Jeffrey B. Liebman | The New York Times | January 30, 2012

...thanks to the accountable care organizations provided for by the health care reform act, a new system is on its way, one that will make insurance companies unnecessary. Accountable care organizations will increase coordination of patient’s care and shift the focus of medicine away from treating sickness and toward keeping people healthy.

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The HITECH Era in Retrospect

John D. Halamka, M.D. and Micky Tripathi, Ph.D. | The New England Journal of Medicine | September 7, 2017

At a high level, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 accomplished something miraculous: the vast majority of U.S. hospitals and physicians are now active users of electronic health record (EHR) systems. No other sector of the U.S. economy of similar size (one sixth of the gross domestic product) and complexity (more than 5000 hospitals and more than 500,000 physicians) has undergone such rapid computerization...

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The Sad State of Uncoordinated Care in the U.S.

Richard Royer | The Doctor Weighs In | September 20, 2016

Care coordination deficiencies in the U.S. healthcare system can be so frustrating that they are (almost) comical. That is a message patient activist Jessica Jacobs aired as she advocated for healthcare operational efficiency improvements and care coordination. Until her death last month, Jacobs blogged and used social media to draw attention to America’s problems with disjointed healthcare. She did this by sharing stories of the numerous system failures she experienced firsthand as a patient with complex care needs...

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This Is The Year Obamacare Takes On Out-Of-Control Health Care Costs

Rick Ungar | Forbes | January 19, 2012

Write down the date. 2012 is the year that some of the more ‘behind the camera’ aspects of the Affordable Care Act will begin to take effect—measures that are designed to primarily impact on the high cost of medicine. Read More »

Two recent surveys of patients and their healthcare providers in the U.S.

Kyle Murphy | EHR Intelligence | June 8, 2012

Two recent surveys that showing general dissatisfaction with the healthcare industry amongst patients and their healthcare providers. The two surveys offer some interesting insight into the current state of affairs.

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Why Aetna Acquired iTriage App Maker Healthagen

Brian Dolan | Mobi Health News | December 16, 2011

Aetna has acquired mobile health startup, Healthagen, developer of the popular health app iTriage, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition marks one of the first exits for a high profile mobile health startup.

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Why Is Healthcare IT Under Fire?

Brian Eastwood | CIO | November 10, 2014

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has lost several key figures in recent months. An economic report suggests that meaningful use may have been a waste of money. Why is healthcare IT under such duress?...

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