Medicare Shared Savings Program
Mercy participates in the Medicare Shared Savings Program as Mercy Health ACO, LLC. ACOs are organizations formed by groups of doctors and other health care providers that pledge to high quality, patient-centered, coordinated care for patients covered by Medicare.
ACO Criteria
ACOs must meet quality standards to ensure that savings are achieved through improving care coordination and providing care that is appropriate, safe and timely. CMS has established quality measures on care coordination and patient safety, appropriate use of preventive health services, improved care for at-risk populations, and patient and caregiver experience of care.
Mercy Health ACO
Mercy is a highly integrated organization that includes hospital and outpatient services across Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas; as defined in communities by location: North Central (Springfield and Joplin/Kansas), East (St Louis and Washington), West (Oklahoma), and South Central (Northwest Arkansas and Fort Smith). Mercy Health ACO is comprised of integrated physicians, critical access hospitals, and rural health clinics across the entire Ministry. These Mercy providers work together to achieve better care for individuals, better health for populations, and lower growth in health care expenditures.
Mercy Health ACO, LLC, Mercy Health and certain Mercy Health affiliates and their employed physicians, as ACO network providers, are parties to an arrangement for which protection is sought under the Interim Final Waiver Rule issued in connection with the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) at 76 Fed. Reg. 67992 (Nov. 2, 2011), as continued as described at 79 Fed. Reg. 62356 (Oct. 17, 2014), pursuant to which the employed physicians have made contractual commitments to maintain a meaningful commitment to the ACOs’ missions to ensure their likely success, to become accountable for the quality, cost, and overall care of patients, including, without limitation, Medicare beneficiaries and to participate in the ACOs’ provider networks and other programs and initiatives of the ACOs.
