An Accountability Care Organization (ACO) is a healthcare body tasked with the responsibility of enabling quality care coordination to ensure that the patient receives the best care, at the right time, and eliminating the possibility of medical errors or substandard services (Pham, Cohen, & Conway, 2014). An ACO ensures that this is achieved by tying the reimbursements of the providers to quality metrics and reducing the cost of healthcare services. Accountable care organization has been directly involved in the provision of quality care that is effective, affordable, integrated, and team-based, which helps in improving the patient’s experience in healthcare (Pham, Cohen, & Conway, 2014). With the brief description herein, the following discussion is written with the primary incentive of presenting an in-depth view of Accountability Care Organizations and its challenges to facilitate for better understanding of the topic.
In understanding more about accountable care organization, a medical practitioner must think along the lines of the role they can play in answerability. Being accountable in healthcare simply entails taking responsibility for the actions that you perform while administering healthcare services (DeCamp et al., 2014). A medical practitioner can fulfill their roles in accountability in many ways. For instance, as a healthcare professional, you will be upholding accountability once you choose to undertake your responsibilities competently and effectively. Another way that one can actively ensure accountability is through ensuring that the needs and wants of the patients always come first and doing this in accordance with the patient-centeredness principles. The act of being accountable for every action the care experts conduct will ensure that the quality of the highest stature is depicted in all the services provided by a healthcare practitioner. In turn, this results in the promotion of answerability and the provision of quality care in a coordinated plan, which guarantees the success of Accountability Care Organizations.
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Since their inception, the model on which the Accountability Care Organizations are founded has proven to be immensely prolific in the healthcare and nursing sector. The same is evidenced by the multitudes of improvements experienced in the way that services are dispensed by healthcare officials. Due to its patient-centeredness aspect, healthcare clients (patients) have been satisfied with the way that services are offered, their affordability and how medical practitioners treat them (Pham, Cohen, & Conway, 2014). Additionally, a huge decrease has been experienced in the percentages of medical errors occurring in healthcare institutions. However, with all the numerous milestones attributed to this model, there are still major challenges affecting Accountability Care Organizations. These challenges are experienced in diverse aspects such as ethical issues associated with ACOs and difficulties that medical practitioners and stakeholders face concerning ACO.
There has been a concern that there are critical ethical challenges for Accountability Care Organizations that face medical practitioners, clinicians, and nurses. One such major challenge that has been noted entails the protection of practitioners’ ethical obligations. It is evident that the individuals involved in the decision-making department of ACOs need to develop quality improvement plans and affordable care strategies that are in line with the ethical obligations of healthcare professionals such as beneficence. For instance, if ACOs were aiming to introduce reductions in the cost of care for individuals with diabetes through decreasing referrals to podiatry, it would be prudent to ask the practitioners to moderate the referrals by a certain percentage (DeCamp et al., 2014). In turn, this will help in eliminating the risk of proposing that the costs of healthcare are significant than the interests of the patients. Furthermore, doing this will lead to the establishment of a referral process for patients who require diabetic care thereby ensuring that practitioners can fully advocate on behalf of their clients ((DeCamp at et. 2014). In nonprofessional terms, the point accentuates the importance of ACOs having a fair decision-making process that involves the best interest of the patients and those of the clinicians to help in upholding ethical obligations.
Another notable challenge faced by medical practitioners in Affordable Care Organization involves the issue of professional autonomy. There has been a public outcry by the primary care providers on the fact that ACOs infringes on the self-sufficiency of their practice since its implementation (DeCamp et al, 2014). Medics believe that Accountability Care Organizations have been overstepping on the independence of their practice. These beliefs arise because of ACOs requiring these professionals to focus mainly on quality metrics rather than the needs of the patients. Putting more emphases on the cost of services rather than what the patient needs is not in accordance with the ethical requirements for practicing medicine or care system. Any professional in the medical industry knows that, ethically, a patient's needs always come before costs. Therefore, because of ACO not adhering to this, an ethical challenge is created for the health providers.
Another challenge facing the ACO is that medical practitioners are not on board with the idea of cutting the costs of services offered in healthcare institutions. The idea of increased work rates and enhanced quality for cheaper rates seems to have forgotten about the plight of the medics. The reason for this being that medical practitioners invest a huge amount of efforts and time in ensuring patients receive quality care but end up receiving minimal salaries and allowances. The consequence of this is that most of the health care professionals refuse to promote the concept of accountable care organization as it does not consider their reimbursements based on the effort they put in ensuring quality care is upheld.
In finality, based on these challenges, I see the role of healthcare workers changing towards a more positive and involving future. It is evident that health care workers play a fundamental role in ensuring the success of Accountability Care Organization. Doctors and nurses are the people who are actively involved in ensuring that patients receive quality care at affordable rates hence attaining consumer satisfaction. However, as outlined in these challenges, the ACO does not completely consider the plight of healthcare workers in the development of its strategies and principles. As a result, this concept of healthcare has been dealt with a host of challenges. To change this, decision-making algorithms in Accountability Care Organizations will have to involve the input and opinions of healthcare workers to guarantee ACO success and survivability. In turn, it will result in solving the complaints presented by healthcare workers concerning ACOs and hence leading to a more positive future for these individuals.
References
Decamp, M., Farber, N. J., Torke, A., George, M., Berger, Z., Keirns, C. C., & Kaldjian, L. C. (2014). Ethical challenges for accountable care organizations: A structured review. Journal of General Internal Medicine , 29 (10), 1392-1399. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-014-2833-x
Pham, H. H., Cohen, M., & Conway, P. H. (2014). The Pioneer accountable care organization model: improving quality and lowering costs. Jama, 312 (16), 1635-1636. Doi:10.1001/jama.2014.13109
