February 28, 2011- By Steven E Greer, MD
Dean Miller of Johns Hopkins and Dean Goldschmidt of Miami discuss accountable care organizations, or ACO’s. The new ACA healthcare law will mandate academic medical centers to form new groups of doctors and hospitals that will be paid set fees per diagnosis and to coordinate care better. The goals are to reduce overall spending, get away from the traditional fee-for-service model, and to improve coordination of care amongst all of the care givers for any one patient.
In Part 1, Dean Miller explains the basic components of an ACO and Dean Goldschmidt explains the importance of a centralized electronic medic record system.
In Part 2, Dean Miller discusses the NEJM paper he co-wrote with Scott Berkowitz that detailed the pilot program ACO at Hopkins called PACE, and the larger ACO efforts with the Johns Hopkins HealthCare managed-care plan.
Dean Goldschmidt discusses ways to measure and reward clinical excellence, as opposed to the current academic route that weights publications and grants mostly. Dean Miller then discusses how to avoid the HMO pitfalls of the 1990’s when quality of care was sacrificed for the bottom line to shareholders.