Doug Hastings, Chair of the Firm's Board of Directors and a Member of the Firm's Health Care and Life Sciences practice, in the Washington, DC, office, was featured in a Q&A column: "Two Years After Implementing the Accountable Care Act."
Following is an excerpt:
According to Hastings:
The Medicare Shared Savings Program (ACO) Final Rule, issued October 20, 2011, has had the most impact, not only on my practice but on the future of health care payment and delivery in the United States. Accountable Care Organizations represent a confluence of ideas evolving over the last several decades about better ways to organize, coordinate and pay for health care services to produce both better quality care and greater cost efficiency. The debate over the Medicare ACO program, culminating in the Final Rule, reflected a robust and important public-private dialogue that will affect all health care providers, health plans, purchasers and consumers in numerous and important ways.
The Final Rule also evidenced significant coordination among CMS, OIG, FTC, DOJ and IRS regarding future regulation of the health care delivery system. Health care lawyers who understand the nexus of the legal, business and policy issues reflected in the Medicare ACO program and similar commercial insurance programs will be well positioned to assist health care providers and payers in the expansive transactional and contractual work that will be required to respond to the ACO movement and related changes in health care payment and delivery.
Reprinted with permission from Bloomberg Law Reports.
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