Haynes and Boone's Newsroom
Michael Silhol in Medical Office Today: ACOs - Creating the Medical Home
09/07/2011
Accountable care organizations (ACOs) have become one of the most discussed provisions of the new health law that was passed earlier this year. Scheduled to launch in January 2012, the aim of the ACO initiative is to assemble different elements of care for the patient such as primary care, specialists, hospitals and to ensure that everything works well together...
“Healthcare providers, and especially, primary care practices, will be expected to do more to coordinate the entire care of a patient and not just refer a patient to a specialist,” says Michael Silhol, a lawyer with Haynes and Boone, LLP, an international corporate law firm with offices in Texas, New York, California, Washington, D.C., Mexico City and Moscow.
Silhol says that a sufficient base of primary care physicians and physician extenders, along with a sufficient IT platform, for electronic health records, is a critical step in creating a medical home. Another important, though not critical step, is alignment with an ACO so that the medical home can share in any cost savings.
Excerpt from Medical Office Today, Sept. 7, 2011. To view the full article, click here.