OneCare Vermont included in Top 100 list by national health care publication

Becker's Hospital Review publication has named OneCare Vermont to its new list titled "100 Accountable Care Organizations to Know.’ An Accountable Care Organization (ACO) is a group of health care providers who have agreed to share responsibility for the quality and cost of care for a specific group of patients, with the goal of improving their overall health.
OneCare Vermont was formed jointly by Fletcher Allen and Dartmouth-Hitchcock in 2012 and after review was approved by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in January 2013 for the purpose of forming an ‘accountable care’ network that could participate in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) offered by CMS. It now comprises all of Vermont’s 14 hospitals, hundreds of primary care physicians and specialists, two federally-qualified health centers (FQHCs), and several rural health clinics.
OneCare Vermont is accountable for Medicare spending ‘ regardless of service provider or location ‘ for the roughly 47,000 Medicare Fee-for-Service beneficiaries whose lives have been attributed to it based on CMS’s formula. Under the MSSP, if OneCare Vermont can demonstrate material reductions in Medicare spending for those beneficiaries while meeting or exceeding 33 quality measures, all network participants, providers, hospitals and health centers will share in the savings, as will CMS itself.
‘I am pleased that OneCare Vermont has received this recognition so early in its history,’ said Todd Moore, president and chief executive officer of OneCare Vermont. ‘Being included on this list is a tribute to the hard work done by our team and by many people throughout Vermont and at Dartmouth-Hitchcock for the past 16 months or so to put this organization together. While we have more work to do, it’s nice to take a moment and reflect on how far we’ve come.’
The ACOs selected for inclusion on this list include Medicare and commercial ACOs, the majority of which are led by hospitals or health systems based on parameters such as the number of physicians involved and lives covered, the lifespan of the ACO, as well as the number of payers with whom it has contracts. They are a mix of Medicare and commercial ACOs, the majority of which are led by hospitals or health systems. According to Becker’s, there are approximately 250 Medicare ACOs nationwide and CMS is reported to be approving an additional 100 to 200 organizations over the next two years.
About OneCare Vermont
OneCare Vermont, based in Colchester, is a state-wide Accountable Care Organization (ACO). ACOs are entities created through the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act and are composed of groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers, who join together voluntarily to provide coordinated high-quality care to the Medicare Fee-for-Service patients they serve. Coordinated care helps ensure that patients receive the right care at the right time, with the goal of avoiding unnecessary duplication of services.
OneCare Vermont is headed up by two non-profit academic medical centers, Dartmouth-Hitchcock and Fletcher Allen Health Care, both of whom will provide highly specialized care when needed and serve as resources to help OneCare Vermont, along with all the other OneCare Vermont hospitals and providers, fulfill its promise.
An ACO is not a health insurance plan or a health maintenance organization (HMO). An ACO doesn't affect Medicare benefits or which providers a patient can choose to see. ACOs put the doctor and patient in charge of patient care, not insurance companies.