ACOs still face barriers to achieving profitability, care goals

It’s been a decade since the launch of accountable care organizations, but many are still struggling to realize their original goal: providing high-quality care while lowering, or at least slowing the rise of, the nation’s health care spending.

That was the message Michael Chernew, PhD, and Jay Crosson, MD, the current and immediate past presidents, respectively, of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) delivered during Tuesday’s session of the National Association of Accountable Care Organizations’ virtual Fall 2020 conference.

Crosson noted that the ACO concept, defined as a set of physicians and hospitals accepting joint responsibility for the quality and cost of care provided to the ACO’s panel of patients, was first proposed by MedPAC in 2009, and included in the Affordable Care Act the following year.

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