Mark Lutes, a Member of the Firm in the Health Care and Life Sciences practice in the Washington, DC, office, was interviewed for an article titled "What Can We Expect in the New ACO Era?"
According to the article, ACOs are being designed to create incentives for healthcare providers to work together to treat Medicare patients across care settings. A shared savings program will reward those ACOs that decrease healthcare costs while efforts are made to meet quality performance standards.
"This is going to be a powerful program because Medicare is a powerful buyer. But it does need to be looked at as a continuum of payment reform," said Lutes.
The idea is that this journey will be moving away from the Medicare fee-for-service form of payment. Instead, it will mean moving "into a mindset where we've got the financial incentive to think about the cost-effectiveness of the episode of care--and not particularly the service provider who is part of that effort," Lutes said.
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