ACOsFuture of Health CareRiskValue-Based Health Care
November 17, 2021

Supercharge Your Way to Value-Based Care

Whether you are an ACO, a health system considering value-based payment, or a medical group weighing your options for Value-Based Care, Roji’s new eBook, Supercharge your ACO for Top Value, has the strategies you need to reduce the cost of care and get clinician backing for innovation. The health care market’s reconfigured landscape puts ACOs—and health care organizations still in a Fee-for-Service contracting circuit—in danger of losing their ability to capture the savings from more effective and efficient health care driven by data, strong physician buy-in, and direct-to-consumer marketing. Medicare Advantage and equity-backed medical groups are competing with traditional providers…
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ACOsEpisodes of CareRiskSpecialty ServicesValue-Based Health Care
October 6, 2021

New ACO Playbook: Seven Keys to Expanding ACO Savings—and Market Share

At the beginning of this series, we laid out a basic tenet: As shared savings plan ACOs, you need to do as well or better at lowering costs than competing value-based payment models. Otherwise, your resources and support will dwindle in favor of more promising avenues to control Medicare spending, and competition will stifle your growth. We’ve examined the competition and what they offer physicians to succeed in Risk and to attract patients. The bar is high. Medicare Advantage Plans, equity-backed practices, and Management-model ACOs like Aledade have changed the playing field for physician participation and growth. ACOs Have Lost…
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ACOsSpecialty ServicesValue-Based Health Care
August 25, 2021

New ACO Playbook: 3 Strategies to Tackle Hidden Costs of Specialty Care

Your ACO’s most significant costs may seem obvious. CMS and most ACOs have put an enormous emphasis on reducing utilization of hospital facilities and nursing home care to control costs. But your real key to cost reduction is knowing what drives avoidable admissions and stays in the first place. And with 50-60 percent of costs attributed to specialty physicians, that is where you need to start. Specialists are—and should be—involved in your most complex patients’ care. Those specialists will benefit from a collaborative involvement in cost data. And both your ACO and your patients will benefit from better and more…
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ACOsEpisodes of CareRiskSpecialty Physicians
November 20, 2020

Five Strategies to Help ACOs and Independent Specialists Create Common Ground on Data Sharing

To successfully manage the 40 to 60 percent of costs of care driven by specialty physicians, your ACO must overcome one major obstacle when you begin to address specialty costs: the lack of information to guide your actions. Although ACOs have claims data to calculate total costs per ACO patient and totals for specialty services, you can't compare those costs. Why? Claims are not organized into cases or "episodes of care" that include all providers and services so that it is easier to compare case costs between patients or providers. More importantly, the small number of Medicare patients seeing any…
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ACOsEpisodes of CareRiskSpecialty Services
October 9, 2020

Seven Key Analytics to Direct Your ACO’s Specialty Strategies for Risk

As ACOs become subject to Risk arrangements, especially global capitation, specialty costs should be one of the first areas to examine for long-term savings potential. Optimal use of specialists and engagement with specialty providers will prove essential for cost management. This is new territory for providers who have decentralized most decisions about specialty referrals and subsequent specialty medical decisions. Leverage for collaboration and examination depends on the ACO’s strength position vis a vis specialty business and competition among specialists for ACO referrals. A primary ACO strategy for cost performance, therefore, must start with its market strategy. Your ACO Competition, Medicare…
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ACOsEpisodes of CareRiskValue-Based Health CareVideo
September 16, 2020

Video: Create Effective Partnerships with Physicians for Value-Based Reimbursements

Physicians were trained to be scientific problem-solvers. Reach your potential under Risk by tapping into their overlooked talent to find the balance between best practice and costs. Learn Three Fixes for ACOs' Physician Engagement Strategies here. Founded in 2002, Roji Health Intelligence guides health care systems, providers and patients on the path to better health through Solutions that help providers improve their value and succeed in Risk.
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ACOsEpisodes of CareRiskValue-Based Health Care
September 10, 2020

Three Fixes for ACOs’ Physician Engagement Strategies

ACOs know that reducing costs is the key goal for Value-Based reimbursement. But strategies on how—or even whether—to engage physicians in that goal have not always been successful, to the detriment of all involved. Part of the problem is that provider revenues still stem from Fee-for-Service payments. Physicians are still rewarded based on meeting volume of patients and revenues. Even if participating in an ACO, your physicians get very clear messages about meeting volume and revenue targets. Hospital and health system-based practices survive by ensuring that volume is maintained—especially in these times. As health plan capitation and new Value-based risk…
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ACOsEpisodes of CareRiskValue-Based Health Care
August 26, 2020

Straight Talk for Providers Adopting Capitation: Don’t Fly Blind Without the Right Data

Value-Based Reimbursement—once focused on incentives and shared savings—now more often means capitation. Whether adopting Medicare Alternative Payment Models (APMs) or contracting with health plans, physician groups and health systems have signaled greater willingness to adopt these new Risk payment models with their guaranteed payments for attributed patients. But here's the problem: If you don't have good data on your costs, you are flying blind. Let’s look at the myths and realities of what you really need both to measure your success under global capitation and to ensure that your Risk program is on track to be successful. Do You Need…
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ACOsCOVID-19Future of Health CareValue-Based Health Care
April 15, 2020

Stretched to the Limit by COVID-19, Will Providers Get Relief from Medicare Value-Based Programs?

This article originally appeared in the April 2020 edition of Accountable Care News . COVID-19 continues its inexorable, exponential spread here in the U.S. Hospitals in New York City, now accounting for more than 7 percent of confirmed cases worldwide, have less than a quarter of the critical equipment and supplies needed to serve an overwhelming surge of patients. Our health care providers are facing impossible choices, even considering universal Do Not Resuscitate orders for patients with COVID-19. Less than one month ago, CMS was closing applications from providers willing to be part of a major movement to adopt financial…
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Artificial IntelligenceFuture of Health CarePopulation HealthValue-Based Health Care
February 5, 2020

How AI Can Engage Consumers to Reduce Disease Risk: The Case of Atrial Fibrillation

In our last article, we assessed how AI could be used to achieve clinical success for individual conditions, and to apply the technology to broad cost reduction efforts and population health interventions. But here's the real test: Can we effectively apply AI technology to help patients better engage in lifestyle risk reduction—particularly for specific conditions at higher risk? To examine the feasibility and issues, let’s take a closer look at Atrial Fibrillation (AFib), an increasingly common and expensive condition. In AFib, the upper part of the heart (the atrium) has ineffectual contraction, causing sludging of the blood and lessened cardiac…
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