Rural ACO consortium expands membership

The National Rural Accountable Care Consortium has brought on board five additional accountable care organizations (ACOs) for 2015.

To date, 52 entities, including 28 rural and critical access hospitals, 42 rural health clinics, 12 federally qualified health centers and 9 private physician practices in 30 rural health systems are part of the consortium, which helps them participate in the Medicare Shared Savings Program. Specifically, the consortium provides services including claims data access and analysis, evidence-based medicine leadership, care coordination coaching and the governance, legal and compliance services to members.

In almost all cases, the rural hospital sponsors the program and invites local providers to join for free. So far, hospitals’ annual revenue ranged from $5 million to $758 million per year, and they all included employed or contracted physicians, only one applicant had enough beneficiaries to form its own ACO, according to the consortium.

"The consortium's unique model of collaboration is the first of its kind to enable rural providers to receive higher reimbursement for improving the care they deliver," said Tim Putnam, CEO of Margaret Mary Hospital and chair of the board for the first National Rural ACO, in a statement. "We can access the same type of powerful data, waivers and programs that urban ACOs can for about the same cost as it would be to hire one person to figure out how to get into the program."