Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio, Is working with CareSource, a non-profit health plan, will establish a responsible care organization on October 1.
Responsible care organization Is a group Clinicians, hospitals, and other healthcare stakeholders who voluntarily gather to provide coordinated care for designated patient groups. Their goal is to improve the quality of care while reducing costs.
The new provider-led pediatric ACO, called Akron Children’s Health Collaborative, will focus on providing family-centered care coordination for approximately 100,000 Medicaid-covered children who join CareSource. Akron Children’s will assume responsibility for care management.
“Working with our supplier partners can combine the strengths of the two organizations and further advance our common goal of providing first-class healthcare to children in the community, thereby improving not only their health but also their quality of life,” Said by Dr. Dale J. Block, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of CareSource in the press release.
ACO will also work with federally qualified health centers, community pediatricians, and family medicine providers to better integrate care for vulnerable children in the state. The focus will be on preventive health care.
Akron Children’s Hospital joins Ohio’s CareSource ACO network, which includes the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Dayton Children’s Hospital, and Columbus’s National Children’s Hospital.
“CareSource has successfully partnered with other children’s hospitals in Ohio, and Akron Children’s believes that this model is also a win-win for our patients and child care providers in Northeast Ohio,” said Grace Wakulchik, President and CEO of Akron Children’s. The hospital, in the press release.
Although there are few studies on pediatric ACO to improve the effectiveness of nursing care, the results have been mixed.
According to a published study, access to consistent primary care through pediatric ACO is related to reduced use of inpatient resources and lower annual costs 2015 JAMA Pediatrics. But this is also related to the increase in the number of emergency room and outpatient visits and the use of drugs.
A recently published study Bachelor of Health Service Studies 2019, Indicating that the quality of elderly, blind, and disabled children receiving care through ACO has improved in some areas (such as adolescent and healthy children’s visits), but not in other areas (such as family health services).
Photo: Gerasimov174, Getty Images
