Accountable Care Organizations final paper edited

Managed Health Care Quality Accountable Care Organization (ACOs) is a health care delivery system at the center of the Affordable Care Act. ACOs consist of physicians, hospitals, and health care providers who work voluntarily to provide quality care to Medicare recipients with a mission to reduce the overall cost of healthcare and improve the quality of care delivered. The Affordable Care Act includes provisions that would extend the services of the ACOs to patients who receive Medicaid and private payers [Ros11]. The ACOs were created through The Shared Savings Program effort to offer physicians, hospitals, and other inpatient providers the opportunity to develop a new type of health care. There are currently 428 shared-savings program ACOs that service 9.7 million Medicare recipients [BMc16]. The members of an ACO agree to be responsible for the quality, cost and patient experience of the Medicare fee-for-service patients. The ACOs are designed to prevent duplication of services and inaccurate billing by making sure that patients are getting the care they need promptly while also making sure services are not duplicated, and medical errors are eliminated [Sha18]