Specialists are integral to the mission of an accountable care organization — they can potentially have the greatest influence on the most complex patients and reengage them in primary care. However, because specialists also tend to provide the costliest care, how can ACO leaders ensure they are choosing the right partners — especially when performance data is scarce?
Salt Lake City-based healthcare intelligence firm Leavitt Partners worked to answer that question. Backed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, researchers spent 18 months pouring over literature on high-value healthcare, conducted meetings with healthcare leaders across sectors and interviewed ACOS and provider associations.
The researchers' work led them to flag seven domains to consider when evaluating a potential partner: patient centeredness, high value culture, system and public accountability, team-based care, health IT systems capability, performance improvement and financial readiness.
Here are seven guiding questions ACO leaders can ask to begin analyzing the fitness of a specialist, according to Leavitt Partners.
1. Do they have a history of forming and maintaining strong relationships with patients?
2. Have they demonstrated a willingness to collaborate on clinical improvement initiatives that involve sharing internally generated clinical data?
3. Are they practiced in efficient utilization and clinical measurement and do they set transparent performance expectations?
4. How well do they collaborate with hospitals and other practices on care coordination?
5. Are they capable of sharing, receiving and managing data?
6. Do they have experience with quality improvement initiatives at all levels of the organization?
7. Are they financially prepared to enter into total cost of care risk contracts?
For more detailed questions to guide qualitative analyses of potential specialist partners, read Leavitt Partner's issue brief "Defining High-Value Specialists for ACO Partnerships" here.
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