(ACO) regulations - American Society of Anesthesiologists

CMS-1345-P 110
care system and we want to ensure that participating organizations have access to
information that will assist them in achieving both improvements in the quality of care
and a better understanding of the population served by the ACO while simultaneously
lowering the growth in health care costs.
We could provide data to ACOs in different forms with a focus on different levels
of information, for example, aggregated population level data or beneficiary identifiable
data. These data could be combined with data collected within the ACO. For example,
our data could be combined with provider level data compiled within the ACO.
Combining aggregate and beneficiary identifiable data as well as provider level and other
internally generated data would provide ACOs with a more complete picture about the
care their assigned beneficiaries receive both within and outside the ACO, their ACO
participants and ACO providers/suppliers' patterns of care, and could be used to assess
their performance relative to their previous years' performance. With this information, in
accordance with established privacy and security protections, ACOs would be able to
identify how its ACO participants and ACO providers/suppliers measure up to
benchmarks and targets, how they perform in relation to peers internally, and identify
which categories of beneficiaries would benefit most from care coordination and other
patient-centered approaches. For a more complete discussion of the requirements
associated with the sharing of internally generated data, please see section II. B.of this
proposed rule
4. Sharing Aggregate Data
Because we believe that ACOs have the potential to significantly improve the
quality of care provided to Medicare beneficiaries while improving the efficiency and