Informal Clinical Integration in Medicare Accountable Care Organizations and Mortality Following Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Accountable care organizations' (ACOs') focus on formal clinical integration to improve outcomes overlooks actual patterns of provider interactions around shared patients.

Objective

To determine whether such informal clinical integration relates to a health system's performance in an ACO.

Research design

We analyzed national Medicare data (2008-2014), identifying beneficiaries who underwent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). After determining which physicians delivered care to them, we aggregated across episodes to construct physician networks for each health system. We used network analysis to measure each system's level of informal clinical integration (defined by cross-specialty ties). We fit regression models to examine the association between a he

SUBMITTER: Kim D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6421077 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature