WASHINGTON – The National Association of Accountable Care Organizations (NAACOS) recognized three members for their outstanding commitment and accomplishments in leveraging accountable care to transform healthcare by improving quality and outcomes, lowering or slowing growth of costs, and increasing patient and provider satisfaction. At the NAACOS Fall conference, the 2024 NAACOS Excellence Award will be presented to Buena Vida y Salud ACO, Northwell Health, and Providence – Health Connect Partners.

The award recognizes ACOs and value-based care provider groups that demonstrate excellence in patient and community engagement, value culture, innovative use of data and technology, and clinical interventions and driving outcomes. A panel of leadership from NAACOS board of directors and committees selected the winners among a competitive field of applicants. Awardees will provide a deep dive of their work at a breakout session on Friday, October 18th from 9:45 a.m.– 11:15 ET. A summary of their respective work is below.

Buena Vida y Salud ACO
A Shared Savings Program ACO primarily located in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley along the southern border, Buena Vida y Salud ACO in 2022 created its Healthy@Home, which uses data analytics to identify patients at high risk of unplanned admissions and then provide them targeted, high-touch coordinated care program, proactive outreach, and programs that address patient needs, mitigate disease progression, and evaluate social needs. After just six months, the ACO saw an average of 33 percent decrease in ED visits, 22 percent decrease in unplanned admissions, and a decrease in spending for these patients.

Northwell Health
Northwell Health ACO, based in New Hyde Park, N.Y., has over 80,000 attributed lives. The ACO developed an algorithm to identify at-risk patients with hypertension. To expand mental health services, it trained over 230 specialty offices in depression screening and launched a Behavioral Health Access Center which triages patients to determine the appropriate level of care. Through its work, Northwell ACO improved blood pressure control from 67 to 78 percent last year. Additionally, depression screening rates improved across multiple specialties, leading to a 5 percent improvement over the first four months, resulting in an additional 75,000 patients being screened.

Providence – Health Connect Partners
Providence encompasses 51 hospitals, 1,000 clinics and 1.7 million lives in value-based care contracts throughout the western U.S. To promote better outcomes, Providence developed a data dashboard to improve care transitions for all patients across the health system, leading to a 2 percent reduction in readmissions in the dashboard’s first year of use. Additionally, Providence was the first to build an HL7® Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) driven data-as-a-service product that facilitates the exchange of clinical data between providers and payers. In 2022, Providence Health Connect Partners generated the most savings for Medicare of any Shared Savings Program ACO, saving nearly $99 million for CMS.

Background on Accountable Care: ACOs are a market-based solution to fragmented and costly care that empowers local physicians, hospitals, and other providers to work together and take responsibility for improving quality, enhancing patient experience, and reducing waste. Because they take financial accountability for patients’ costs, ACOs have incentives for improving beneficiaries’ health. Value-based payment reforms have generated more than $22 billion in gross savings for Medicare over the last decade and improved the quality of care for millions of patients. More than 13 million beneficiaries are cared for by an ACO, with more than 600,000 physicians and other non-physicians participating. Beyond traditional Medicare models, providers are employing similar value-based care arrangements across all payers.

About NAACOS
NAACOS is a member-led and member-owned nonprofit of more than 470 ACOs in Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurance working on behalf of health systems and physician provider organizations across the nation to improve quality of care for patients and reduce health care cost. The National Association of ACOs (NAACOS) represents more than 9.1 million beneficiary lives through Medicare’s population health-focused payment and delivery models.

1. The press release from NAACOS
2. The press release from NAACOS
3. The press release from HDAI

“Providers like Buena Vida y Salud, LLC are setting standards for providing care that is effective, reliable and patient-focused,” said Gary W. Floyd, MD, chair of the TMF Board of Trustees. “Their leadership in process improvement is helping to transform health care and create better outcomes for their patients.”

The TMF Physician Practice Quality Improvement Award is based on the four categories of the Merit-based Incentive Payment System: Quality Measures, Promoting Interoperability, Improvement Activities and Cost/Utilization. Practices were assessed on clinical outcome measures for the 2018 calendar year.

“Delivering quality care requires an ongoing commitment to assessing, testing and improving processes,” said Sheila Magoon MD, “Our organization is honored to receive this award recognizing the value of this work. We look forward to continually finding new ways to provide quality, patient-focused care.”

The award criteria aligns with national health priorities established by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to improve patient care and satisfaction, promote effective care management and increase the use of health care technology.

For more information, contact Sheila Magoon MD at 956-412-3235 or drmagoon@bizrgv.rr.com

For more information about the TMF Physician Practice Quality Improvement Award, and to view the complete list of award recipients, visit https://award.tmf.org/.