Dive Brief:
- To succeed in the transition from fee-for-service to value-based care, new ACOs will need to learn quickly where to invest to make the model viable, J.D. Whitlock, director of clinical and business intelligence at Catholic Health Partners told Healthcare Finance News.
- New ACOs will need to learn from those who have already mastered the model, such as the Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente, Whitlock said.
- Among the most important investments is EMR technology, he said. The key will be in deploying (and subsidizing for its affiliates) a centralized EMR capable of at least some population health management functions.
Dive Insight:
Brand-new ACOs have quite a mountain to climb in building out the right IT infrastructure and extending it to support its partners. Even if they have a sophisticated EMR infrastructure, they will have considerable work ahead of them in creating a technology flow that supports their partners. That includes investment in their analytics team, including a mix of junior and senior analysts and those with claims data and clinic expertise, according to Whitlock. All told, the transition involves a huge investment of time and energy.