Medicare Expands Accountable Care Organization (ACO) Model

Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers, who come together voluntarily to provide coordinated, high-quality care to their Medicare patients to help them deliver better care at lower cost.

The goal of coordinated care is to ensure that patients, especially people with chronic conditions, get the right care at the right time, while avoiding unnecessary duplication of services and preventing medical errors. ACOs represent one part of a comprehensive series of initiatives in the Affordable Care Act that are designed to lower costs and improve care. When an ACO succeeds in both delivering high-quality care and spending health care dollars more wisely, it will share in the savings it achieves for the Medicare program. Medicare currently offers or is planning to offer several ACO initiatives including:

•  Medicare Shared Savings Program

•  Pioneer ACO Model

•  Next Generation ACO Model

•  Advance Payment ACO Model

•  Comprehensive End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Care Initiative

The ACO Investment Model is an initiative developed by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (Innovation Center) for organizations participating as ACOs in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (Shared Savings Program). The ACO Investment Model is a new model of pre-paid shared savings that builds on experience with the Advance Payment Model to encourage new ACOs to form in rural and underserved areas and current Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs to transition to arrangements with greater financial risk.

For more information about the ACO Investment Model, please click here >>