Can Accountable Care Organizations Improve the Value of Health Care by Solving the Cost and Quality Quandaries

In the current health reform discussions, accountable care organizations (ACOs) have been proposed as a novel way to slow rising health care costs and to improve quality in the traditional Medicare program and perhaps other public and private insurance programs. However, for many, it is not clear what ACOs are and whether and how they differ from other past reform approaches intended to achieve the same goals. The ACO concept is confusing partly because it is a concept with a history, one that is rapidly evolving and for which the terminology seems to keep changing. In fact, as the Issue Brief will show, different reform ideas have now been joined under the rubric of ACO.