It’s been a little more than two years since Saint Thomas Health launched MissionPoint Health Partners, an accountable care organization through which a group of providers have agreed to care for a set patient population for a set fee.
In that time, the ACO has grown its membership to 90,000, learned a lot about the need for holistic care and looked to expand across all vectors of the health care and payer space.
But, CEO Jason Dinger said in a recent interview with the Nashville Business Journal, it’s still far too early to draw broad conclusions about the success — or failure — of the ACO model.
“I would say this is kind of a 10- to 15-year journey,” Dinger said of the ACO movement.
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Already in its first two years, Dinger said, MissionPoint has made several changes to its model, which differs some from most ACOs currently in operation.
At first, Dinger said, the group hired all its health partners under the same umbrella before realizing that patients needed health partners with different skillets depending on their current conditions and experiences. Now MissionPoint splits its partners into three teams to help patients at different stages of care.
The other major change in the early going was an expanded focus on nonclinical care, which ranges from helping members find safer, healthier living conditions to dealing with some of the external stressors of needing health care, such as an elderly Medicare patient getting a ride to the doctor.
Although the ACO always planned to go beyond the clinical while working with patients, Dinger said, “I think we underestimated [nonclinical issues].”
Date: Mar 17, 2014