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Why Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) Will Not Solve Our Healthcare Cost Crisis

April 20th, 2011 by Stanley Feld, M.D. in Health Policy, Opinion
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In 2009 President Obama stated that Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) were going to be pilot programs in real world settings. The goal was to see if they effective in reducing costs and increasing “quality of care.” The results of the pilot programs have not been published.

Last week despite the lack of proof of concept HHS and CMS announced new proposed regulations for ACOs.

The new delivery and payment model the agency estimates could serve up to 5 million Medicare beneficiaries through participating providers, and also potentially save the Medicare program as much as $960 million over three years.

How were these estimates derived? It could be another accounting  trick by President Obama’s administration.

The idea of coordinating care and developing systems of care is a great idea theoretically. From a practical standpoint, execution is very difficult.

I tried to execute something similar in 1996 with the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists; a national Independent Practice Association. AACECare received little cooperation or interest from Clinical Endocrinologists.

The problem is coordinated medical care is dependent on physicians cooperating and not competing with each other.  It also depends on  hospital systems developing an equitable partnership with physicians.

The equitable partnerships between hospital systems and physicians are difficult to achieve if past results are any indication of future results. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Repairing the Healthcare System*

Primary Care Is Being Crushed By A Paper Weight

September 29th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Health Policy, Opinion
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Ever wonder why your physician only spends 5-10 rushed minutes with you during your office visit? You may think it’s because there are simply too many patients vying for her time, but that’s not the real reason. The root cause is that health insurance companies are stealing time from your visit by requiring excessive documentation from your doctor. She can’t give you the time you need, because doing so would put her out of business.

In a special report on the administrative burden of healthcare, MedPage Today revealed that PCPs spend about one third of their income on documentation required by health insurers. Because they run a business with thin margins, they must increase the volume of patients they treat in order to cover the salaries of the staff required to manage this “paper weight.”

About 49% of all physicians have said that they are considering retiring or quitting medicine in the next two years (the rate is lower for specialists), largely because of increasing documentation requirements and decreasing reimbursement. Read more »