Assignment Description:
Accountability in Healthcare
This assignment will be at least 1500 words. Address each bulleted item (topic) in detail including the questions that follow each bullet. There should be three (3) sections in your paper; one for each bullet below. Separate each section in your paper with a clear brief heading that allows your professor to know which bullet you are addressing in that section of your paper. Include a “Conclusion” section that summarizes all topics.
This week you will reflect upon accountability in healthcare and address the following questions:
- Briefly define an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) and how it impacts health care providers:
- How do ACOs differ from the health maintenance organizations (HMOs) of earlier years
- What role does health information technology (HIT) play in the newer models of care?
- learn about ACO here
- What is the benefit of hospitals partnering with primary care providers?
- How does bundling payments contain healthcare costs?
- How does pay for performance (P4P) improve quality care?
- Briefly discuss the value-based purchasing program?
- How do value-based purchasing (VBP) programs affect reimbursement to hospitals?
- Who benefits the most from value-based reimbursement and why?
- How does the VBP program measure hospital performance?
Solution:
Accountability in Healthcare
The United States of America (U.S.) has for many years been working to improve the quality of healthcare by orienting healthcare systems towards value over volume-based care delivery (Hogle, 2019). The federal expenditure is close to 1/5 of the nation’s economy, which places a heavy financial burden on healthcare and other social services such as infrastructure, education, and social security programs (Schmid et al., 2021). The need for value-based care (VBC) is even more pronounced since despite being one of the topmost nations that spend more on healthcare across the globe, the U.S. continues to rank the lowed in healthcare performance measures (Wilson et al., 2020). The need to improve the safety and quality of care while controlling costs and enhancing population health brings forth concerns about accountability. To achieve accountability, healthcare systems need to exploit the opportunities available to match resource utilization with care effectiveness (Hogle, 2019). The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the accountability of healthcare by discussing accountable care organizations (ACOs), the role of health information technology (HIT) in newer models, partnerships between hospitals and providers, bundled payments, pay for performance (P4P), and value-based purchasing program.
Accountable Care Organizations
As described by Kaufman et al. (2019), ACOs are a group of physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare professionals who collaborate and join as one entity to assume the responsibility to improve the quality of patient care delivery. Hospitals and providers under ACOs are rewarded for maintaining patient health through the delivery of appropriate and quality care, not for the quantity/ volume/number of services, procedures, ad tests provided (Hogle, 2019). Since ACO payments are based on quality, they hold hospitals and providers responsible and accountable for high-quality care delivery (Schmid et al., 2021).