How can the formation of Accountable Care Organizations improve quality of care and make providers more responsible for the cost of care? Give an example of a study that has addressed coordination of care and has had documented success. Describe the research and its implications for care.

Introduction

Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) characterises the American healthcare reforms whereby healthcare providers focus more on quality and effective management of healthcare services compared to the traditional system based on the quantity of services provided. When healthcare providers namely hospitals, physicians, and non-medical providers come together and agree to work as a team towards ensuring improved, responsible financial outcomes for the specific population. Notably, the system payment model moves risk from payers such as employers or insurance towards healthcare providers. The shift motivates service providers in the sense that incentives change the manner in which they offer healthcare service to concentrate on patient satisfaction and quality. State Medicaid plans to adopt the ACO model, Medicare and profit-oriented healthcare insurers. The new system that focuses on quality has led to an upsurge of the number of ACOs from 100 to more than 700 in five years only. The ACO model currently serves more than 23 million population and exists in all of the states. The new system rapidly adopted because of the disjointed and misaligned healthcare system in the US. The fee-for-service model encourages quantity rather than quality, and this causes poor healthcare services across the nation. Again, the healthcare costs continue to escalate regardless of reform in care delivery, and thus the Accountable Care Organizations intervenes to inject quality into services delivered. Generally, the objective of ACOs is to boost health among people, improve patient care services, and decrease the cost of medical services. The primary force behind the model is to curb increasing costs of healthcare and transform the healthcare system to provide robust, credible and reliable healthcare services.

Finally, the ACOs ensures enhanced coordination of healthcare service delivery among providers.

References

Kunaviktikul, W. (2014): Moving towards the greater involvement of nurses in policy development. IntNurs Rev. 61(1), 1-2.

Milstead(2017): Health Policy and Politics. Jones & Bartlett Book, 6th Edition.

Nickitas, D. M. (2016): Policy and politics for nurses and other health professionals. Jones & Bartlett Book.2nd Edition. 9781284053296

 
Do you need high quality Custom Essay Writing Services?