A Primer on CMS-Regulated Accountable Care Organizations
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) defines an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) as a group of doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers, who voluntarily and jointly coordinate high-quality care to their Medicare patients. For the purpose of this article, these are defined as CMS-regulated ACOs.
The goal is to ensure that all patients receive the most cost effective and results-based care on a timely basis. This is especially true for chronically ill or sicker patients; CMS has expressed that the intended objective is to avoid unnecessary duplication of services and to prevent medical errors for these patients.
