ACO health solutions

What is an accountable care organization? ACO is an organization formed when hospitals or doctors or other health care providers combine their expertise, systems and equipment to coordinate high quality care to patients while lowering costs. They try to work together to figure out new strategies and investments to improve outcomes and keep costs down for the patient. This is why your local hospital may now be part for an allied group of hospitals. You may have noticed that your primary care physician's office has a new name and new practitioners available. Ideally, care is improved, patients are more satisfied, and costs are under control. This model has met with minimal success because primary information systems are enough to significantly drive needed changes in delivery of services.

ACO managment requires many systems working at once to provide data, analyze data, share data and come up with strategies. Electronic medical records and health information exchange were the early systems that new organizations invested time and money. These systems provided information, but did not help in understanding the relationships between costs and quality of care. ACO analytics are important to be able to utilize data and make it work for the organization and the patient. More data systems have to be added to achieve this goal.

Consulting firms with experience in data analysis and clinical procedures can help your organization realize a return on investment for systems. ACO solutions are developed when more information systems are added to electronic records and information exchange. An activity based costing system allows the organization to understand cost and revenue correlations in different payment models. A patient reported outcome systems will provide understanding of quality if care and clinical outcomes. It will also help determine patient satisfaction. The last system needed is a data warehouse to analyze all the data from the other four systems to develop strategies.

The combination of all these systems gives a more concise picture of the ACO and identifies interventions and changes that will improve the quality of care in cost effective ways to increase positive patient outcomes. The right consultants will provide installation services and improvement services that include the aims of the ACO, the strategies and implement changes. Data collection and analysis will help drive the process and get you the results ou are seeking. The time line for a return on your investment begins 6 months after kick off and accountable care organization solutions is fully appraciated in 24-36 months.