Caravan Health - Successful ACO Strategies | ACO Savings

ACOs sounded great on paper – 5,000 lives and you’re in. But many Medicare Shared Savings Program participants are seeing unreliable financial performance even though they're doing everything right. For most providers, the missing piece is scale and without scale, ACO success is unlikely. If you tried and failed in an ACO with 5,000 lives – you may have done everything right – you were just 95,000 lives short.

We know a thing or two about scale. We’ve run the numbers, we’ve tested ACO sizes and we’ve compared the outcomes of providers who work with large numbers of attributed lives and smaller numbers. And, we’ve figured out how to make the numbers work. ACO success comes down to needing more lives. It’s not enough to be in an ACO. You need to be in an ACO that has scale.

In 2019, Caravan Health launched the nation’s largest-ever collaborative ACO, bringing together more than 125 providers across 24 states to help hospitals and health clinics attain the critical mass necessary for ACO success. By collaborating, providers gained more lives which we have proven, leads to predictable savings in the ACO program. Our collaborative ACO model positions providers for ACO success and the ability to maintain their autonomy.

Still wondering if joining an ACO makes sense for you?
Many providers have asked the same questions.

Are we too small? Too rural? Too specialized? Too vulnerable?

We are the nation’s leader in accountable care for a reason. We have developed the formula for ACO success, and we’ve demonstrated it with our results.

Our largest ACO achieved more than $30 million in shared savings.

Are you leaving money on the table by not joining an ACO?

You’re not too small, too rural, too specialized or too vulnerable to join our collaborative ACO. We will show you, as we have with hundreds of providers across the nation, how to make your numbers work.

When you join our Collaborative ACO, we’ll help you:

Overcome the tyranny of small numbers where it’s common to have a few very sick patients skew performance measures for the entire organization.
Reach the critical mass of 100,000 lives necessary to avoid statistical variation.
Reduce performance uncertainty by 85% and ensure results are within 1% of true performance.
Get a clearer understanding of the status of your improvement initiatives – clinical, operational, and financial.
Cover your losses – we’re so confident you won’t be cutting CMS a check; we cover losses greater than 1% in exchange for 10% shared savings.

With enough patient lives to make your ACO statistically viable, we’ll show you how to make the numbers work, and you’ll be positioned for continued ACO success.

With Caravan Health, now you can:

Generate More Revenue

We know how to make the numbers work. We’ve demonstrated how to sustain ACO success and we have the data to prove it. With our proven model for turning population health from a cost center to a revenue generating center, health care providers can learn how to make the success of their ACO pay for itself. We’ll help you generate new revenue streams while improving care through adoptable initiatives like increasing annual wellness visits and billing for nurse-administered preventive care. Our model for ACO success can increase annual inpatient revenue up to 5–7%, outpatient revenue up to 10–17%, and patient wellness revenue by $250–$500 per Medicare patient.

Improve Care While Preventing Burnout

Our customized coaching supports a nurse-led, team-based care approach that benefits patients, physicians and staff. Caravan’s clinical experts work closely to support and train your population health nurses so they are prepared to lead preventive care services, like chronic care management, advance care planning and behavioral health integration, that drive immediate revenue streams while taking the burden off of physicians. Whether in-person or virtually, these core components of population health prove time and time again to lead to continued ACO success.

Cut Costs Without Cutting Quality

Within Caravan’s vast ACO network, our population health experts and data analytics teams have developed clinical and technological resources that allow ACO participants to optimize care delivery, identify gaps in care and improve patient outcomes by expanding services where indicated – but not previously recognized. Our provisions of resources are continuously updated to ensure that providers have relevant, actionable tools for ACO success.

Drive Change That Improve Results

Organizational change can be hard – but it doesn’t have to be. Central to the success of every ACO is the willingness and ability to adapt to, and implement, change. Few, if any, clinicians were trained in value-based care. Most nursing and support staff have not been educated or trained in population health and despite, at times, high levels of expertise in extraordinary roles - no one expects or asks your staff to adapt to value-based care without support. Your ACO success is dependent upon a smooth transition to new health care delivery models and we ease the burden of change by supporting all levels of your organization by employing our on-going communication, education, and onboarding processes.

Strategies for ACO Success

As population health payment models continue to demonstrate higher quality of care with lower costs, providers must be prepared to experience increased pressure to transition their practices to value-based care. This includes taking on risk and understanding how to play the numbers game. Without knowing how to make the numbers work, staying on course for ACO success can be challenging.

How do you compensate for lost revenue from reduced ER visits and hospitalizations?
Will you be prepared to write a check to CMS every year?
How will you make the numbers work?

As the nation’s leading ACO experts, Caravan Health recognizes the need for value-based care and understands the benefits of ACOs. In our work with urban and rural health systems and providers nationwide, we have helped our partners transition to population health and have sustainable ACO success. Membership in a successful ACO helps to improve the collective health of communities by improving quality and lowering total costs, while generating new outpatient revenue. But hospital administrators don’t need another initiative to manage or more policy changes to untangle. They need solutions and we’ve got them.

Year after year, Caravan Health ACOs consistently perform better than their benchmarks by delivering better patient care and lowering overall costs. Together, we work with our ACO participants to raise our collective level because we have shared goals. You want to deliver high quality care and generate new revenue and we want the same. That’s why we continue to create innovative strategies, provide educational resources and work closely with you to make sure we understand your challenges so you can achieve ACO success regardless of external circumstances.

ACO success is attainable for every hospital system, physician practice, and/or clinic willing to commit to the integration of population health care. The experience of participating in an ACO offers its own set of rewards, challenges and pitfalls which can be expected with any paradigm shift or change. Many systems and providers have tried and failed – we’ve learned from their failures and have created a proven solution to ACO success. With Caravan Health’s support, resources AND ACO and analytics experts, we are confident that our clients will have the knowledge and ability to outperform the benchmarks year after year.

ACO Success