Accountable Care Disorganizations

A Commonwealth Fund report on the readiness of 59 health care organizations, members of the Premier Partnership for Care Transformation Readiness Collaborative, moving to become Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) show that all 59 have much work to complete before becoming fully functional.   That’s weird.  You would think that creating a fantasy world would be easy?  The biggest reasons, as stated in the his AMN article, is that the hospitals or health systems are having difficulty locking down their relationships with the primary care physicians.    In fact, the authors of the report could not believe that these organizations were not ready by now.   None of the ACOs have all of the six core components and this “reality check” was described in the article as “crossing a bridge while building it”.  Remember what I said about a fantasy world?.   Interestingly enough, all these groups evaluated were hospital systems and not physicians groups who are having a much easier time reaching ACO fantasy status.   To hospital administrators this must by heresy.  How dare anyone conclude that having doctors on board  is ACTUALLY important for the delivery of healthcare!