Health Care

Patient-Centeredness: Crucial to Success for Accountable Care Organizations

Accountable care organizations (ACOs), a potentially game-changing health care model, must fully embrace patient-centered care if they are to succeed in their twin goals of improving the quality and cost of care for patients and their families.

A new white paper released by the National Partnership for Women & Families and Health Quality Advisors, describes how ACOs can best meet these critical goals. Building Patient-Centeredness in the Real World: The Engaged Patient and the Accountable Care Organization, is collaboration between the two organizations, produced with support from Aetna.

The Affordable Care Act allows Medicare to contract with groups of doctors and hospitals to provide better coordinated care to seniors and people with disabilities and to share in potential savings if they can show they are improving care. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has included specific measures of patients’ health outcomes, satisfaction, and costs. In April 2012, Medicare launched the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) with 27 ACOs in 18 states. Earlier, CMS chose 32 other organizations to participate in a Pioneer ACO demonstration project run by its Innovation Center. A third wave of ACOs are scheduled to launch in July.

The white paper examines the separate but intertwined ethical, economic and clinical concepts of patient-centeredness and reviews evidence that this approach to care can improve care and costs. The paper also profiles successful ACOs operating across the United States.

Read the report »