Accountable Care
Physician-led ACOs showing impressive results
By Greg White, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Allscripts TouchWorks
Physician practices now lead more accountable care organizations (ACOs) than do hospitals and health systems. Recent results, reported by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), show that a majority of Medicare Shared Savings Program participants who earned bonuses are physician-led organizations. This trend is arising for commercial payer-based ACOs as well.
Many physician practices are participating in and creating accountable care organizations to achieve the CMS Triple Aim: improving population health and patient experience and managing costs.
What are the results?
- Based on a recent press release, HealthCare Partners Physician Group, one of the nation’s largest operators of medical groups and physician networks, partnered with Anthem Blue Cross to create an ACO providing care to 55,000 patients that has resulted in improved clinical metrics and $4.7M in savings in just six months.
- Coastal Carolina Quality Care, Inc.’s ACO used actionable data to drive improvements in quality, resulting in costs declining by 19 percent, or $2,635 per patient, for beneficiaries who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid.
- Independent physician group models such as Qualuable Medical Professionals, an ACO associated with Holston Medical Group, are positioned to create savings – for Qualuable Medical Professionals, more than $10 million in its first year.
What do these three physician-led ACOs have in common?
They are all using Allscripts TouchWorks EHR as part of their ACO strategy. The use of TouchWorks EHR supports their mission and vision of delivering quality and affordable care for their communities.
According to industry analysts, ACOs are looking to solve select key needs. Allscripts technology allows ACOs to meet these needs by:
- Connecting the community: Ability to collect, aggregate and connect patient data from a variety of sources and then normalize it in preparation for analysis.
- Stratifying patient populations and assessing risk: Ability to analyze patient data to highlight gaps in care and opportunities for improvement. Some risk stratification includes statistical models that produce risk scores and predict utilization.
- Coordinating care to improve outcomes: Ability to guide care managers with patient data and workflows that prioritize patient outreach efforts.
- Engaging patients in a meaningful way: Ability to drive patient behavior with automated tools for reminders, surveys and education.
- Managing referrals: Ability to coordinate transitions of care.
- Financial, operational and clinical reporting: Ability to measure the report quality and cost performance that helps guide ACO participants and meets government and payer requirements.
To read more about how Allscripts can support your practice, go to www.allscripts.com/core.
EHR Comparisons
Black Book's 2014 EHR rankings list top vendor solutions in Ambulatory/Alternate Site and Inpatient EHR systems, among others. More than 22,000 users total were validated in the 2014 ranking process of 614 EHR/EMR suppliers, with results being released this year starting in late February. Black Book collects ballot results on 18 performance areas of operational excellence. More category results are available at www.blackbookrankings.com.
Overall 2014 “Best of the Best” |
#1 Top EHR Vendor |
- Patient Health Data Management & Admin Processing……… Greenway Medical
- Clinical Workflow & Encounter Management…………………………………. e-MDs
- Interoperability, Communications & Connectivity……………………….. Allscripts
- Decision Support & Results Review…………………………………………… Optum
- Electronic Prescribing……………………………………………..…………….. DrFirst
- Meaningful Use, CPOE & Claims Support…………………………………… Emdeon
- Hospital-Employed Physicians…………………………………………………. Cerner
- iPad & Mobile Device EHR……………………………………………………. drchrono
Ambulatory/Alternate Site EHR Systems
- Practice Management Integrated EHR/EHR/Billing………………………….. Kareo
Practice Management + PM/Billing Product
- Family Practice…………………………………………………………. Practice Fusion
- Pediatrics………………………………………………………………… Practice Fusion
- Geriatrics……………………………………………………………….. Amazing Charts
- General Practice……………………………………………………….. Practice Fusion
- Nurse Practioners……………………………………………. Healthfusion Meditouch
Facility-Based/Setting Use Specialties
- ACOs……………………………………………………………………… Optum Insight
- Multispecialty Clinics…………………………………………………………. McKesson
- Independent Practice Associations…………………………………………. Allscripts
- Urgent Care/Occupational Med…………………………………….. Practice Velocity
- Pathology………………………………………………………………………. NovoPath
- Radiology…………………………………………………………………………… Viztek
- Hospitalists………………………………………………………………………… Cerner
- Surgery Centers……………………………………………………………….. SRS EHR
- Surgery Centers…………………………………………………….. Kinnser Software
Primary Care Specialties
Inpatient EHR Systems |
Ambulatory/Alternate Site EHR Systems
Stats for office-based docs
Wondering how your EHR progress is stacking up against other office-based physicians? Well the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has just the report for you. Newly released, “Trends in Electronic Health Record System Use Among Office-Based Physicians: United States, 2007–2012” presents EHR adoption rates compared by selected physician and practice characteristics. Download the full report
EMR/EHR Solutions
Make care transitions seamless athenaCoordinator Enterprise is a first-of-its-kind clinical integration and patient access service designed to help hospitals and health systems connect and track care across settings, networks and disparate HIT systems. This solution delivers a full suite of capabilities not found as part of any of today’s inpatient EHR systems and can be overlaid across multiple HIT systems to enable the sharing of clinical briefings with providers (even out-of-network providers) using different EHRs. athenahealth
Paragon for hospital-owned practices Paragon Ambulatory Care Practice Management is designed for hospital-owned practices of all sizes. This solution extends McKesson’s affordable, single-database hospital information system (HIS) beyond the inpatient setting into the ambulatory care setting, providing a single patient record and the same look, feel and intuitiveness of Paragon in physician practices. One solution for billing, registration, scheduling, patient health record, patient education and health maintenance support provides multiple advantages, including continuity, increased patient satisfaction and workflow improvements. McKesson
Total solution for physician-led ACOs eClinicalWorks Care Coordination Medical Record (CCMR) provides organizations visibility into a patient’s care across all settings, facilitates smooth transitions of care, engages patients and providers in preventative care, improves outcomes among populations and reduces costs. A vendor-neutral, open network securely connects ambulatory EHRs with hospital in-patient systems and payer claim feeds, including CMS, to provide cost and utilization for services delivered to patients. eClinicalWorks
Decision support built right in The Allscripts TouchWorks EHR is a powerful, multi-specialty ambulatory system that offers automated clinical decision support at the point of care, a configurable clinical desktop and nearly 800 peer-reviewed Care Guides. It is a highly customizable solution with an open architecture and efficient workflows that can help improve the patient experience. In 2013, Allscripts TouchWorks registered improved year-over-year KLAS scores for every major category in the ambulatory EHR segment. Allscripts
