Supporting the Development of Accountable Care Organizations in the Hudson Valley

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

Grantee Name

Taconic Health Information Network and Community, Inc.

Funding Area

Special Projects Fund

Publication Date

December 2012

Grant Amount

$131,342

Grant Date:

November 2010–December 2011

Special Projects Fund

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.

Outcomes and Lessons Learned

  • Organized an ACO legal workgroup representing a broad range of payer and provider participants.
  • Organized four ACO Insights webinars designed to address key operational and policy decisions for developing an ACO. Total registration across all webinars was 980 and attendees represented a broad range of stakeholders.
  • Organized a conference in June 2011 with more than 100 attendees.
  • Contracted with RAND Corporation to help determine the median reliability and ranges for each utilization measure in its multipayer data set across individual physicians and practices.
  • Published a public white paper in November 2011 titled “Building ACOs and Outcome-Based Contracting in the Commercial Market: Provider and Payor Perspectives.”