Next Generation Accountable Care Organization

In 2017 Premier Health was selected by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to participate in the Next Generation Accountable Care Organization (NGACO).  The organization was one of only 42 participating in NGACO that year and was only one of two without prior ACO experience.

The program essentially sought to test if strong financial incentives, improved tools for better patient engagement, and engaged care management would improve health outcomes and lower expenditures for Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) beneficiaries.

Altogether, Premier Health’s ACO included 21,000 aligned beneficiaries over nine counties, along with over 120 Primary Care Providers.  Care teams were provided with tools to help them better manage the beneficiary’s care through developing communication and care coordination across the continuum.

Through these collaborative efforts, Premier was able to successfully generate a shared savings of $3.9 million for calendar year 2017, and the overall CMS program was able to generate savings of $208 million across all participating ACOs.

Back to the February 2019 Issue