Building Accountable Care Solutions

Right now, it’s a little bit of the Wild West in terms of building Accountable Care Solutions (ACS’s)…which is not necessarily bad.

You have physicians building ACOs. You have hospitals building ACOs. You have managed care companies buying physician groups to have ACOs. You have managed care companies providing technology to providers to have ACOs. You have consultants helping design ACOs. You have technology companies building components of ACOs. Eventually, my prediction is that you’ll end up with some type of franchise model on ACOs that providers can leverage. Perhaps it’ll be like the Medicine Shoppe model for pharmacies.

But, as I read through all the literature and try to have opinions on this space, there are a few core things I keep coming back to:

• Leveraging Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) guidelines
• Consumer engagement and behavior change
• Quality tracking and reporting
• Technology enablement
  • Patient registries to collectively manage similar patients
  • Gaps-in-care identification
  • Risk modeling
• Coordination of data and care across PCP, specialists, hospitals, pharmacy, clinics, and labs
• “Care coordinator” role (probably a blend of human and automation)
• Sharing value and risk

While traditional providers have been focused on actual diagnosis and care, they haven’t focused on most of this. This is a fundamentally different business (at least at the individual physician level). Even the one that most naturally fits with the practice of medicine – Evidence Based Medicine – is a challenge given the pace of change and information. Plenty of studies have documented this challenge.

So, while everyone is now using this term that our team started using last year, the reality is that ACS’s are complex solutions that take a holistic view of the patient and their care and manage using EBM with an integrated solution that blends technology and face-to-face care with a focus on specific health outcomes.

• Aetna on Accountable Care Solutions
• United Healthcare on Accountable Care Solutions
• Insanity Workout Review

To borrow from Ernst & Young, here’s a framework they propose on their website about Accountable Care:

[To see more about our physician directed Accountable Care Solutions at inVentiv Medical Management, click here. Or contact me if you’re interested in how we’re applying these to support ACO and “ACO-like” organizations in their efforts to engage consumers and drive health outcomes.]