Estimates of ACO savings in the presence of provider and beneficiary selection.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Medicare's accountable care organizations (ACOs)-designed to improve quality and lower spending-were associated with growing savings in previous studies. However, savings estimates may be biased by beneficiary sorting among providers based on healthcare needs and by providers opting into the program based on anticipated gains.

Methods

Using Medicare administrative claims (2009-2014), we compared annual spending changes after provider organizations joined ACOs to changes in non-ACOs (controls). To address provider selection, using novel data to identify non-ACO organizations, we restricted controls to comparably large provider organizations. To address beneficiary selection, we (a) estimated within-organization (including non-ACO comparison organizations) spending

SUBMITTER: Ouayogode MH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7887069 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature