The 2017 ACO Survey: What Do Current Trends Tell Us About The Future Of Accountable Care?

This article presents an overview of the results from the inaugural 2017 Annual ACO Survey and provides important insights into the current and future state of the ACO industry. Overall, we found that a large number of ACOs are currently considering or have firm plans to participate in future risk-based contracts (47 percent planning for shared savings/shared risk and 38 percent planning for capitation), although care management strategies are largely unchanged. This and the data below suggest that ACOs are slowly becoming willing to accept increased financial risk, but they are largely still learning how to actually manage populations. About The Survey The survey was sent to all known ACOs across the country, including participants in Medicare, commercial, and Medicaid programs, from January 2017 to April 2017. Ultimately, the survey gathered responses from 240 unique ACOs—almost one-quarter of all identified ACOs—ranging from urban to rural organizations, single to multipayer contracts, and physician- to hospital-led to integrated ACOs (Exhibit 1). It should be noted that compared to all ACOs in the Leavitt Partners database at the time of the analysis, survey respondents represented more Medicare ACOs than other contract types; however, participants were geographically, size, and organizationally reflective of the overall ACO population. Exhibit 1: Survey Respondents Versus Database Comparison Notes: 1Includes 215 of the 240 responses that could be matched to ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Medicare Payment Policy Quality Accountable Care Organizations delivery reform NAACOS Payment Reform Source Type: blogs