The elusive goal of health reform is to create a reimbursement system that incentivizes medical providers to deliver higher quality care at a lower cost. The recently enacted federal health reform legislation does not establish a single mechanism for achieving this goal. Instead, it authorizes a range of new programs designed to test innovative ways of holding down runaway medical expenses while improving the often uneven quality of care. One of these experiments is the accountable care organization (ACO).
Read the article here.