How ACOs In Rural And Underserved Areas Responded To Medicare’s ACO Investment Model
Health Affairs 11/10/2020
Implementation of accountable care organizations (ACOs) has been occurring unevenly across the nation, with rural areas lagging behind their more urban counterparts in ACO establishment (for example, see here, here, and here). To help establish ACOs in more areas of the country, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) developed the ACO Investment Model (AIM) to provide participating ACOs with up-front and ongoing monthly payments over 24 months to fund ACO infrastructure investments and staffing. As part of the Medicare Shared Savings Program (SSP), the payments were to be recouped through any shared savings earned by the ACOs that sufficiently decreased costs relative to a financial benchmark, as specified by SSP regulations. Forty-one new SSP ACOs, primarily located in rural and underserved health care markets, joined AIM in 2016 (exhibit 1).
