A new article in the Journal of the American Medical Association highlights the need for careful due diligence in planning accountable care organizations. In “Implementing Accountable Care Organizations – Ten Potential Mistakes and How to Learn From Them”, authors Sara Singer and Stephen Shortell highlight “Overestimation of Ability to Use Electronic Health Records” and “Overestimation of Ability to Report Performance Measures” as critical issues in the potential success of risk-bearing population-driven provider organizations. The authors warn that lack of training of clinicians in EMR use along with the lead time necessary for EMR implementation may pose a significant impediment to achieving the ACO’s goals. They also highlight the challenge of collecting, analyzing and reporting performance data and suggest that these capabilities may take time to develop fully.
This article continues to highlight the need for proper planning and due diligence analysis in the areas of data availability, design of key performance metrics, and analytics and reporting infrastructure. A recent article in Accountable Care News authored by Singletrack Analytics provides a framework for strategy and due diligence processes that ACOs should follow in planning their information technology and analytics structures. Proper planning, validation of the availability of critical data elements, and integration of analytics into the core strategy of an ACO may help to mitigate these two potential mistakes