The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released proposed new rules late last week to help doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers better coordinate care for Medicare patients through Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). An ACO is a network of doctors and other health care providers and suppliers that shares responsibility for providing care to patients.
The latest release from the HHS states that,
ACOs create incentives for health care providers to work together to treat an individual patient across care settings – including doctor’s offices, hospitals, and long-term care facilities. The Medicare Shared Savings Program will reward ACOs that lower health care costs while meeting performance standards on quality of care and putting patients first. Patient and provider participation in an ACO is purely voluntary.
You or someone you know, may have a serious illness and have more than one doctor and taking more than one medication. If so, you have more than likely witnessed how disorganized your doctor’s office is when it comes to your medical information. No one likes to have to repeat the same information at each visit or watching doctors fumble through unsystematic files. It shows just how much our health care system needs to form accurate coordination of information and better communication between health care providers.
Medicare beneficiaries who have five or more chronic conditions suffer the most – and more than have of the Medicare beneficiaries fall into this category. With such serious conditions as diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease, these beneficiaries are very likely to have multiple physicians. These patients are at risk when doctors have failed to coordinate information in their files – so each physician is not sure what the last doctor did or they may not know which medication or dosage was prescribed. This can inevitably lead to the patient not getting the right care they need and there is an increased risk of being prescribed a medication that should not be taken with a medication prescribed by another doctor. It can also lead to complications that require hospitalization – which could have easily been prevented. A study was conducted on nearly 12 million Medicare beneficiaries which showed that 1 in 5 patients discharged from the hospital was readmitted within 30 days which means if hospitals and doctors were better organized and coordinated with files and communication ”across care settings” , readmission may have been avoided. (continue reading…)
