Maturity model aims to guide ACOs
A five-stage Accountable Care Maturity Model from IDC Health Insights is designed to help healthcare organizations gauge where they are in the process and make strategic decisions about business and IT initiatives.
The report lists five stages of maturity:
- Ad Hoc: with pilot and proof-of-concept initiatives
- Opportunistic: with sporadic programs with no dedicated funding or staffing
- Repeatable: with funding available, processes established, technology available
- Managed: with established budget, management, focus on program evaluation
- Optimized: with enterprise adoption of proactive, collaborative, team-based patient management
In each stage, five factors are evaluated:
- Intent (governance, budgeting, structure)
- Technology (availability of required technology)
- Data (access to high-quality data at the right time)
- People (staffing and domain expertise)
- Processes (established best practices)
The report provides guidance at each level. For instance, in the managed stage, it says that IT efficiency has been demonstrated and that this might be a good time to introduce mobile technology for patient engagement.
It offers a 12-to-24-month outlook, saying companies will need to invest in technology beyond EHRs--especially analytics--to get past the ad hoc and opportunistic levels. In the 24-to-36-month trends, it foresees organizations implementing technology to automate the processes of identifying and managing care for at-risk patients.
IDC offered similar maturity models previously for big data, social media, cloud computing and other trends. Access the full report here.
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.