Another round of changes in healthcare are coming.
Medicare appears to recognize the ACO model is not saving them any money. They also appear to be aware of the complaints that doctors are voicing about the compliance nightmare of documenting the necessary metrics to comply with the shared bonuses.
On top of that, lots of policymakers are seeing the math not working for PCPs.
Lots of ACOs are quality organizations that deliver value to their members, but many are simply forcing a compliance burden on the doctors and then chewing up any bonuses in administrative overhead.
Imagine being a PCP and doing hundreds of hours per year in additional paperwork to comply and then having “bonuses” be a few dollars that don’t cover the additional costs all while seeing that your efforts are not resulting in any cost savings to the system!
Although we are not ready to endorse the new Direct Contracting model coming out of The Center for Innovation, we are watching to see how it unfolds over the coming months.
The promise is certainly there.
And we are working on vetting the opportunity.
Stay tuned.
