PPACA: Health Policy Watcher Questions ACO Concept

Greg Scandlen, a longtime health policy specialist, is raising questions about whether the accountable care organization (ACO) will do much to improve the U.S. health care system.

Scandlen, an analyst at the Health Benefits Group, Hagerstown, Md., who organized the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, Alexandria, Va., has written a blog entry suggesting that the ACO initiative may be more about buzzwords than innovation.

An ACO is supposed to be a vehicle for paying teams of health care providers to provide and manage care for whole patients, instead of paying for care one service at a time. The Affordable Care Act, the legislative package that includes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), is requiring Medicare to use ACOs starting in 2012.

Many private health insurers are experimenting with ACOs, but Scandlen suggests in the blog entry that the terms used to describe how ACOs should operate, such as “patient-centered” and “accountable” – may not mean much, in this context.