Accountable Care Organizations (ACO)
When some doctors, healthcare providers and hospitals get together to give their patients a high quality and well coordinated care, forms an organization. This organization is known as Accountable care organizations. ACOs are based on integrated systems of delivery and posses a range of doctors and physicians, virtually connected. The aims of this organization is to look after the patient and deliver them right treatment at the right time and also coordinate all the efforts so not to overlap or repeat anything. This results in reduction of the medical errors. This procedure saves the cost of medical treatment. Another important aim is to stop spread of diseases through preventive measures and spreading education. The most important objective is to bring reduction in costs and reduce the waste of money in healthcare system. The conditions which will result in ACOs,if physicians and other related professionals are practicing in a group, or they have form a network or there exists a collaborations between physicians, hospitals and professionals. If these conditions exist anywhere it will be called as ACOs. The requirements any ACOs need to fulfill are, it must have a formal legal framework to distribute the savings, it should possess a minimum of 5,000 numbers of beneficiaries, it should agree to take part for three years or so. An organization must fulfill these requirements to form a ACOs. (American Hospital Association, 2010)
This new treatment method will bring lots of improvement in the health care services, its payments, looking after patients in the best possible way and bring reduction in the costs.
Director of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy, Elliott Fisher introduced the concept of ACOs in 2006. In 2009, this concept was brought into the Federal Patient Protection Act. Up till now, 404 ACOs are registered