An accountable care organization is a form of a managed care organization in which a group of networked health care providers, which may include hospitals, group practices, networks of practices, hospital-provider partnerships, or joint ventures, are accountable for the health care of a defined group of patients. Initial results of the institutions participating in CMS's Physician Group Demonstration Project did not demonstrate a substantial reduction in imaging that could be directly attributed to the accountable care organization model. However, the initial results suggest that incentive-based methodology appears to be successful for increasing compliance for measuring quality metrics.
Keywords: Accountable care organization; Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; imaging; physician group demonstration project; radiology.
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