Experts from Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia have voiced concerns that accountable care organizations could potentially be designed to exclude minorities and widen healthcare disparities, according to a news release from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.
Craig Pollock, MD, MHS, assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, said hospitals and physician practices treating a disproportionate share of minorities may have a difficult time joining ACOs, falling further behind in the cost and quality of care benefits.
"There is ample evidence of racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare," Dr. Pollack said in the release. "Hospitals and private practices that care for greater numbers of minorities tend to have larger populations of Medicaid and uninsured patients. These patients have less access to specialists, and their hospitals and practices tend to have fewer institutional resources than their counterparts."
To ACOs' influence on healthcare disparities, Dr. Pollack and co-author, Katrina Armstrong, MD, from the University of Pennsylvania, suggest measures to evaluate the process of creating ACOs from an antitrust/market consolidation perspective. Measures of quality should include details of the patient population by race and ethnicity within individual ACOs, across separate ACOs and compared with patients not in ACOs.
The experts' commentary appears in the April 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Read the Johns Hopkins Medicine release on ACOs and healthcare disparities.
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Craig Pollock, MD, MHS, assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, said hospitals and physician practices treating a disproportionate share of minorities may have a difficult time joining ACOs, falling further behind in the cost and quality of care benefits.
"There is ample evidence of racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare," Dr. Pollack said in the release. "Hospitals and private practices that care for greater numbers of minorities tend to have larger populations of Medicaid and uninsured patients. These patients have less access to specialists, and their hospitals and practices tend to have fewer institutional resources than their counterparts."
To ACOs' influence on healthcare disparities, Dr. Pollack and co-author, Katrina Armstrong, MD, from the University of Pennsylvania, suggest measures to evaluate the process of creating ACOs from an antitrust/market consolidation perspective. Measures of quality should include details of the patient population by race and ethnicity within individual ACOs, across separate ACOs and compared with patients not in ACOs.
The experts' commentary appears in the April 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Read the Johns Hopkins Medicine release on ACOs and healthcare disparities.
Related Articles on ACOs:
6 Building Blocks of a Technology Framework for ACOs
Should Your Hospital Form an ACO? 5 Considerations
ACO Benefits May Not Reach Underserved Communities