ACOs or Accountable Care Organizations

By tfbuser on January 27, 2012 | Listed under Health Insurance Glossary | Leave a comment |

ACOs (Accountable Care Organizations) are a part of the Health Care Reform Act (HCR) or its official name: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

This is scheduled to go into effect on January 1 2012 and, for the most part will impact Medicare . ACOs from what I can see look like HMOs but will be different. HMOs, however, can be ACOs.

The Houston area Kelsey’s Seybold Doctor Group and their association with St. Luke’s Hospital is a form of ACO.

ACOs are the latest model for delivering medical services by offering doctors and hospitals financial incentives to provide quality care to Medicare beneficiaries while keeping down costs.

I have fielded questions on this acronym and wanted to put up some information on this on the website. I have also provided the following two links to what I think are reliable news sites with an explanation of ACOs.

See

NPR from 01/18/2011 on ACOs
And
Kaiser Health News from 10/21/2011 on ACOs