NAACOS: National Association of ACOs

Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are of 2 minds right now. On the one hand, there is a lot of excitement for the future of ACOs, but there is also great anxiety around the changes that CMS proposed for the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), said Clif Gaus, ScD, president and CEO of the National Association of ACOs (NAACOS).

Accountable care organizations (ACOs) often care for patients with complex, chronic conditions that can lead to high expenditures and utilization of care. During a session at the National Association of ACOs Fall 2018 conference, being held October 3-5 in Washington, DC, panelists discussed how ACOs can design and implement strategies that deliver high-quality, low-cost care for these patients.

The proposed CMS regulation to change the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) so that accountable care organizations (ACOs) take on risk faster creates a one-size-fits-all model that doesn’t allow for variability, said Joe Antos, PhD, the Wilson H. Taylor Resident Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at the American Enterprise Institute.