By Holly Hayes
In our series about Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), physician management emerges as an area worthy of better understanding. Marc Bard and Mike Nugent make five observations about the “management of physicians and the achievement of outcomes” in their book “Accountable Care Organizations”:
- While greater clinical integration can be achieved without economics/financial integration, achieving a meaningful clinical integration is difficult without some economic incentives to support it.
- Greater integration is a key driver of improved clinical outcomes, economic performance, and, perhaps most important, provider satisfaction.
- Migrating from a loosely coupled to a tightly coupled management system is extremely difficult and takes significat investment of time, energy, and financial and social capital.
- Transforming care enough to significantly improve outcomes and resource utilization is much more difficult than achieving “clinical integration” at least as defined by the Federal Trade Commission.
- The emerging generation of physicians is more comfortable with standardization and more capable of practicing medicine as a true team endeavor.
In future posts, we will explore some strategies for successful physician management and moving from a loosely to a tightly coupled management system. For our other posts on ACOs, see here, here, here and here. We welcome your thoughts on this topic.
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Holly Hayes is a mediator at Karl Bayer, Dispute Resolution Expert where she focuses on mediation of health care disputes. Holly holds a B.A. from Southern Methodist University and a Masters in Health Administration from Duke University. She can be reached at holly@karlbayer.com.
