Taconic Health Information Network and Community, Inc. (THINC)

Current health care reimbursement structures generally reward volume rather than value, and do not encourage coordination or collaboration across unaffiliated organizations.

A promising, but new and largely untested, model called accountable care organizations (ACOs) has emerged as a way to slow rising health care costs and improve quality. An ACO formally brings together a set of non-affiliated providers, and holds them accountable for the cost and quality of care delivered to a defined population of patients. The Taconic Health Information Network and Community, Inc. (THINC) brought payers and providers to the table in a joint pursuit of models that would benefit both communities in the Hudson Valley region. The New York Health Foundation funded THINC to facilitate a planning process among payers, providers, and other key stakeholders.

The planning process has three components: (1) bringing together health care providers and payers to explore the ACO model and develop common principles; (2) providing training and technical assistance on the “nuts and bolts” of ACOs (including financial modeling, legal considerations, quality measurement, and management and leadership); and (3) populating a communitywide data set across multiple payers and years to enable quality and cost outcome analysis.

Read the report associated with this grant, “Building ACOs and Outcome-Based Contracted in the Commercial Market: Provider and Payor Prespective.”