The Pioneer Accountable Care Organization (ACO) program is designed to improve clinical quality and patient experience while reducing the total cost of care for Medicare beneficiaries. Based in Minneapolis, Fairview Health Services is a non-profit health care system providing the full continuum of clinical care—from prevention of illness and injury to care for the most complex medical conditions. Fairview Health Network, part of Fairview Physician Associates (FPA), brings together Fairview-employed providers and independent providers who are committed to delivering higher value to patients and payers. Fairview and FPA will partner in the Pioneer ACO Model to deliver great care and better value to 18,000 Medicare patients.
The payment models being tested in the first two years of the Pioneer ACO Model are a shared savings payment policy with generally higher levels of shared savings and risk for Pioneer ACOs than levels currently proposed in the Medicare Shared Savings Program. In year three of the program, participating ACOs that have shown a specified level of savings over the first two years will be eligible to move a substantial portion of their payments to a population-based model. These models of payments will also be flexible to accommodate the specific organizational and market conditions in which Pioneer ACOs work.
