ACO Rules are Out

By Filed under New Health Care Law on October 24, 2011 with 3 comments

The Administration just released its final accountable care organization regulation, which can be viewed here. This is from Chris Jacobs:

  • At 696 pages, the final rule is more than 50 percent longer than the 429-page proposed rule released earlier this year….
  • The regulation also uses the word require (or some variation thereof) a whopping 1,064 times – up from 601 references in the proposed rule….
  • With the release of the final ACO reg, we will have exceeded 10,000 pages of Obamacare regulations and related notices published in the Federal Register….

For a more positive view, see Mark McClellan and Elliott Fisher in Health Affairs. Michael Millenson, who was quite critical of the draft rules, is more optimistic this time around.

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Comments (3)

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  1. Brian Williams. says:
    October 24, 2011 at 9:52 am

    The new rules require hospitals to sharply reduce admission rates, but provide meager incentives to do so. Without offering a different way of being paid (along the lines of John Goodman’s ideas), why would a hospital want to cut their revenues by reducing inpatient care?

  2. Ken says:
    October 24, 2011 at 10:40 am

    I can’t imagine that any of this matters very much.

  3. Bruce says:
    October 25, 2011 at 10:09 am

    Will this work? Of course not.