#1 Task in 2023 for Medicare ACO Readiness in 2024

While there are many tasks to complete before you submit your notice of intent or application to the Medicare Accountable Care Organization (ACO) program, the first task is to define, evaluate, and select your network of participating providers.

Once you have identified a geographic region of providers, obtain their Medicare beneficiary data for analysis and evaluation purposes.

Before offering a participation agreement to a facility or individual provider, the ACO management team should know 1) number of patients; 2) number of costly patients; 3) Acute Hospital Utilization (AHU) benchmark; 4) current and historical risk score; 5) historical HCC diagnosis recapture rate; 6) current and historical financial benchmark; and 7) quality performance.

After evaluation of this data, a discussion and plan of action plan for the provider should be put in place before the beginning of 2023 and performance tracked throughout 2023 to ensure success in 2024 program participation.

Kris Gates, [email protected]