Our country urgently needs research on the impact of “accountable care organizations” on cost and quality. The ACO has been the establishment’s great hope for health care reform since the concept was invented at the November 9, 2006 meeting of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. If ACOs are not going to work, we need to know sooner rather than later.
Although it’s been almost a decade since the ACO concept was invented and six years since Congress endorsed it, we know remarkably little about ACOs. What little reliable research we have was done on CMS’s ACO programs, but even that research is woefully incomplete. As for the ACOs set up by state Medicaid agencies and insurance companies, we know almost nothing.
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