In September 2015, DH made the difficult decision to withdraw from the Pioneer program. DH was not alone in exiting the program: while 32 programs joined the Pioneer ACO program in 2012, by the program’s third year, only 19 organizations remained.
Below, we describe the three specific -- and solvable -- issues that led DH to withdraw from the Pioneer program, all of which arose by virtue of DH having operated in a very low-cost environment for a long time -- a characteristic that seemingly makes it very difficult for Pioneer ACOs to be successful. Medicare should address these deficiencies in future ACO project iterations.
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