Radiologist participation in Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) accountable care organizations (ACOs) increased from 10.4 percent to 34.9 percent between 2013 and 2018, according to a study published online in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
The research was sponsored by the nonprofit Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute, which studies the value and role of radiology and radiologists in evolving healthcare delivery and payment systems.
“We believe that our work shows that MSSP ACOs are increasingly recruiting radiologists into their plans alongside other specialty care providers, potentially preparing themselves to better assume downside risk in the program while simultaneously improving care and clinical outcomes,” said Stefan Santavicca, a research associate of the Georgia Tech Health Economics and Analytics Lab (HEAL), in a statement. “Further research on the impact of ACO expansion on imaging utilization and equipment ownership may help radiologists promote greater value as they increasingly participate in MSSP ACOs.”
Santavicca and his co-investigators linked several separate data sets and found that 90 percent of large ACOs had participating radiologists in 2018. However, this participation rate is largely unchanged from 2013 when this rate was 88 percent. Similarly, there were only modest gains in the percent of medium-size ACO with participating radiologists from 63% in 2013 to 66 percent in 2018. However, during this 5-year period, the participation rate increased from 26 percent to 52 percent in small ACOs. This growth in the percent of small ACOs with participating radiologists shows the penetration of shared savings programs impacting radiologists even in settings that lack the urban, large, specialty-heavy ACOs that have greater capacity for coordinating care, the researchers found.
“While volume-based reimbursement still dominates the healthcare market, value-based reimbursement is gaining ground,” said Danny Hughes, P.hD., Director of HEAL and Georgia Tech professor of economics, in a statement. “This study shows that economic incentives of value-based care are reaching beyond the patient-facing specialties such as primary care providers to specialties like radiology to whom patients are not typically attributed.”
