e-CareManagement blog

Chronic Disease Management • Technology • Strategy • Issues and Trends

The Big Idea in Understanding “Accountable Care Organizations”

Here’s the big idea: accountable care organizations (ACOs) are about creating accountability.
ACOs of various types are being proposed in national health reform legislation. For all you ever wanted to know about ACOs, read How to Create Accountable Care Organizations from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform.   I spent an hour and a half poring over the details of this [...]

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Hospital Economics Don’t Reward Chronic Disease Management

My colleague and friend Dr. Jaan Sidorov has recently started a blog — Disease Management Care Blog.  Check it out and add it to your RSS feed.  Jaan is eminently qualified to write on the topic — he spent 25 years at Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania as a practicing physician and as an executive, [...]

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Despite Limited Penetration, Integrated Delivery Systems Have Advanced Chronic Care

The 1990’s experiment around development of integrated delivery systems (IDSs) mostly did not take root. This experiment was primarily about financial integration — doctors joining with hospitals so that they could together contract with health insurers for capitated reimbursement, hospitals starting their own health plan, or hospitals buying physician practices as a way of guaranteeing [...]

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One More Dark Cloud in the Stormy Skies of Medicare DM

Mathematica Research has just released a report: The Evaluation of the Medicare Coordinated Care Demonstration: Findings for the First Two Years.  It’s not pretty.
Section F of the Executive Summary is entitled “Synthesizing the Findings: What Works, and What Doesn’t”.  That section begins:

Given that few of the programs have shown convincing evidence to date of reducing [...]

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Today’s BFO: How can P4P Work W/O a QB?

Translation  Todays blinding flash of the obvious (BFO): How can you expect pay-for-performance (P4P) programs in Medicare to work with out a designated physician quarterback (QB)?
Please allow me to elaborate.
P4P programs are based on two assumptions:

Patients are assigned to a physician or a practice that will have primary responsibility for their care, and
That a meaningful [...]

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About Vince — Bio 2.0 (the informal one)

Hi, I’m Vince Kuraitis. Welcome to the e-CareManagement blogsite.
This is Bio 2.0 — more of the personal story, less from the CV.
The World Headquarters of my company — Better Health Technologies, LLC — are located on the second floor of my house, across the hallway from my daughter. Actually, that’s [...]

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