About the whitepaper

Employers and health plans that have contracts with Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) depend on them to deliver more coordinated, cost-effective, high-quality care throughout their provider network. But a recent analysis by Signify Health shows that unless employers or health plans significantly restrict plan members’ choice of providers, only half of the care delivered to those plan members will come from providers in the ACO. The other half is delivered by providers who are not part of the ACO — and thus are often more expensive, less coordinated, and offer no line of sight into quality. How can employers and health plans improve ACO utilization by plan members, without restricting plan member choice?

This whitepaper offers an analysis on:

• How ACOs have evolved to manage risk across a significant number of commercial contracts
• How episodes of care can bridge the gap between costly fee-for-service and total cost of care models
• How ACOs can increase network integrity — improving the proportion of the total plan’s population that seek care at ACO provider locations 
• Structuring incentive mechanisms to point plan members to the higher-quality, lower-cost care without sacrificing choice
• Aligning primary and specialty care to share accountability toward better patient outcomes

Download the whitepaper