Impact of Accountable Care Organizations on Healthcare Practices

This essay delves into the critical concept of accountability within healthcare organizations, specifically focusing on the influence of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). It examines the multifaceted impact of ACOs on healthcare providers, including changes in payment structures, care coordination, and provider commitment. The essay highlights the crucial role healthcare providers play in demonstrating accountability through their duty of care and adherence to established policies. It further explores the challenges faced by ACOs, such as lower reimbursement rates, lack of physician leadership, and technological incompatibilities. The analysis extends to the resulting transitions in the roles of healthcare specialists, emphasizing improvements in patient care and the reduction of hospital readmissions. The essay concludes by underscoring the importance of accountability in achieving operational efficiency and high-quality patient care within healthcare settings, demonstrating how ACOs strive for excellence and provide benefits to both providers and patients.

Running Head: HEALTHCARE
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NURSING ASSIGNMENT
7/27/2019

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Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Influence of ACO on the healthcare providers..........................................................................2
Role of healthcare providers in Accountability......................................................................2
Challenges faced by Accountable Care organisations...............................................................3
Transition in the role of health specialist resulted from challenges...........................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................4
References..................................................................................................................................5

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Introduction
The assignment brings about the discussion on the concept of accountability into
healthcare organisations and the related aspects. The essay will analyse the impact of the
Accountable care organisations as a healthcare provider. In addition, the essay will mention
the role of an individual and healthcare provider in the organisations. Thus, the readers will
understand the aspects of accountability within healthcare organisations. Accountability in
context to healthcare organisations is vital to ensure taking responsibility for actions. It
defines the answerability for the decisions in the course of medical or professional practice.
As nurses, midwives, or health professionals are held accountable both legally and
professionals for their practices that influence their patients/clients.
Influence of ACO on the healthcare providers
Patients are influenced by the affordable care organisations in number of ways. As
they receive better or improved health care, effective treatment for chronic health illness, and
increases their engagement with the health providers. This is an important factor that reduces
their costs of receiving care from the healthcare. Moreover, it also helps in improving
transitions in care, which is beneficial for both i.e. healthcare providers and patients
(Medicare, 2018).
Being healthcare provider, the influence has been found in context to payments, as
they receive payments depending on the care provided to their clients. Thus, it can be stated
that the operations in the healthcare are governed by the ACOs through improving the
coordination and communication amongst the health care providers. Consequently, it has a
major impact on the commitment to the health providers (Kaufman et al., 2019).
Role of healthcare providers in Accountability
The role of healthcare provider they play in demonstrating their accountability is
crucial to the quality care. The health care providers contribute by playing the role of
undertaking the duty of care towards their patients. They can also play their part by working
in compliance to the established rules or policies of health care provider. Therefore, it is
another major aspect of accountability as a healthcare provider working in the healthcare
(Roberts, 2017).

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Accountable Care Organisations (ACO) refers to the doctors, hospitals, and healthcare
providers who work in a coordinated manner to provide care to the patients. ACO’s work
with the aim of providing improved care and treatment, and preventing errors.
Challenges faced by Accountable Care organisations
A number of challenges are faced by the Accountable care organisations (ACO), as
lower reimbursement rates. One of the major problem or challenge faced by the health
providers includes lack of physician leadership and management structure. In context to the
ACOs, it is essential to work and practice within a medical team, for making changes in the
operations and obtain positive results. Therefore, effective leadership is a vital challenge
facing healthcare organisations. This is done with the aim of increasing revenue for the
success in hospital administration.
Another challenge facing the ACOs relates to the issue of ‘wrong medical staff’
wherein the community hospitals hires medical staff and doctor optimally. However, doctors
or staff within ACOs often affected, due to improper and insignificant hiring practices
(Salmond & Echevarria, 2017). Therefore, it states the requirement of an optimised
composition of different care specialists and experts in the hospitals. For an example, there
may be eight Orthopaedic Surgeons, and six Cardiologists who work to hospitalize patients
(Robert Pearl, 2018).
The research findings on the functioning of ACO healthcare mentioned that atleast
five specialists are required and this leads to the problem of transferring the patients to a
different care facility for treatment. This creates a problem for the healthcare providers and
leads to sudden loss of patients and revenue. Therefore, it requires improvements in the
system of delivering care to the clients. Some other challenges consist of lack of
accountability and transparency in the ACOs healthcare (Colla et al., 2016).
Besides, there has been a vital impact of the lack of incompatibility of the technology
and other systems. It states that the ACO providers must invest in connecting their
information technology systems. This determines the aspect of redundancy of care, which is
inevitable without ensuring comprehensive medical information (Nyweide et al., 2015).

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Transition in the role of health specialist resulted from challenges
As a result of the challenges, trends and complexity faced by the ACO, certain
changes observed in the healthcare, or health providers. The aspect of healthcare
transformation and changing role of nursing included a better and holistic care approach
towards the patients. Moreover, the coordination amongst the health providers and settings
has been also improved. This has led to an improved and quality care of the patients, and
positive health outcomes of the treatment. Furthermore, the rates of hospital admission and
readmission were also reduced which ultimately enhanced overall functioning of the ACO
(Kruse et al., 2016).
The role of nurse has been found vital as they lead the transformative changes in the
healthcare. They have established strong therapeutic alliance to assist their patients in their
illness, Health care experts or clinicians and nurses in the healthcare dedicated themselves
towards practising transition in care, For attaining this, the health professionals treated their
patients as partners to provide better and improved care, This has essentially led to an
improvement in the prevention of harm caused in the hospitals, and reduced the hospital
readmissions. Therefore, these are certain changes observed in the role and care provided by
the health providers subject to the challenges by ACO (Salmond & Echevarria, 2017).
Conclusion
To conclude the above discussion it has been analysed that the accountability is
considered a vital phenomenon in healthcare. The above report has stated the meaning and
significance of accountability and the result in the improvement in the operations. The role
of Accountable Care Organisation has been demonstrated, along with the challenges faced by
them to attain health outcomes. In healthcare organisations, accountability ensures
improvement in the operations and attains high efficiency. These aspects have been explained
in the assignment effectively, leading to high accountability in the health practices. ACO, i.e.
accountable care organisations has therefore strived towards achieving excellence and
provide quality care to their clients. Hence, contribution of the ACO has been linked to
reduced medical costs and other benefits to health providers and patients.

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References
Colla, C. H., Lewis, V. A., Bergquist, S. L. & Shortell, S. M. (2016). Accountability across
the continuum: the participation of post-acute care providers in Accountable care
organizations. Health services research, 51(4), 1595.
Kaufman, B. G., Spivack, B. S., Stearns, S. C., Song, P. H. & O’Brien, E. C. (2019). Impact
of accountable care organizations on utilization, care, and outcomes: a systematic
review. Medical Care Research and Review, 76(3), 255-290.
Kruse, C. S., Goswamy, R., Raval, Y. J. & Marawi, S. (2016). Challenges and opportunities
of big data in health care: a systematic review. JMIR medical informatics, 4(4), 38.
Medicare. (2018). The Affordable Care act: Helping providers help patients A menu f of
options for improving care. Retrieved from:
https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Medicare-Fee-for-Service-Payment/ACO/
downloads/ACO-Menu-Of-Options.pdf
Nyweide, D. J., Lee, W., Cuerdon, T. T., Pham, H. H., Cox, M., Rajkumar, R. & Conway, P.
H. (2015). Association of Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations v/s traditional
Medicare fee for service with spending, utilization, and patient
experience. Jama, 313(21), 2152-2161
Robert Pearl. (2018). The 4 biggest obstacles ACOs face. Retrieved from:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertpearl/2014/08/14/the-4-biggest-obstacles-acos-
face/#209d1a6565f2
Roberts, J. (2017). Accountability. In The Routledge companion to critical accounting (pp.
225-239). United Kingdom: Routledge.
Salmond, S. W. & Echevarria, M. (2017). Healthcare transformation and changing roles for
nursing. Orthopaedic nursing, 36(1), 12.