Payer Partnerships and Population Health

A healthy partnership between accountable care organizations (ACOs) and payers is the linchpin for successfully using the ACO model to better coordinate care, improve population health and reduce care costs. That’s one of the main takeaways of “Transforming Payer Arrangements to Align with New Care Models,” a webinar hosted last week by the Charlotte, N.C.-based Premier healthcare alliance. The webinar’s participants discussed lessons learned from Premier’s Partnership for Care Transformation (PACT) Population Health Collaborative, an initiative launched in 2010 to help its member health systems implement ACOs in local markets, and to identify the gaps and capabilities necessary to launching an ACO. During the webinar two Primier member organizations, Fairview Health Services and Mountain States Health Alliance, discussed their experiences developing ACOs and how they worked with payers to develop sustainable ACO models.