What are ACOs? A new buzzword in health care is ACOs, which is
actually an acronym for Accountable Care Organizations. It is
one of the pilot programs in the new health care law that is
administered by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services
(CMS) [aha.org, 2012]. ACOs are network of physicians and
hospitals agreeing to share with the responsibility of caring
for patients which has a striking resemblance to the definition
and history of health maintenance organizations (HMOs). ACOs are
considered to be the government’s answer in containing the cost
of providing health care to the increasing numbers of Medicare
eligible “baby boomers” and disabled people (Meise1l & Pines,
2011). The key word here is “accountable” because ACOs are
accountable for managing their own networks of physicians and
hospitals, accountable for giving patients the best possible
quality of care and accountable for keeping the cost of care
down. ACOs will maintain their own report card or quality
benchmark and will report to the CMS