Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) can be defined broadly as groups of doctors, nurses, physicians and support staff who work together on profit sharing basis in order to improve quality of care delivered to Medicare patients. The overall goal of the ACO model is to reduce costs through improved preventive care and disease management. It aims to improve quality through care coordination and develop necessary skills and resources to meet cost and quality health care goals in present and future.

On the other hand, a Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) is an approach to delivering comprehensive primary care as a health setting that creates and facilitates a relationship between patients, their families, and sometimes, their primary care physicians.

Both concepts of delivering healthcare to patients work closely with each other. The first one, ACO, is one of the proposed models in the much-debated Obamacare act while PCMHs are also a relatively newer concept aimed at improved quality of healthcare in an ideal setting for patients. It further aims to improve financial and clinical outcomes, physician and staff satisfaction. Patient engagement is also one of the important aspects that PCMHs address. The overall objective of PCMH is to improve outcomes – results not volume. On the other hand, the ACO model is also about improving quality care while at the same time reducing costs. However, there is an additional factor of Accountability for everyone working in the model, as the name suggests. The people working in the model are not only aimed towards improving quality, but also accountability.

In an ACO model, all the people working in it share the profits from the savings they make from their budget. This model allows physicians to continuously bring costs down because the more they will save, the higher their profit will be.

However, there is always a limit to how much the cost can be brought down and there might be a time when a steady flow of compensation will be required by the stakeholders in the healthcare system.

There have been questions on how the ACOs will work in future. Should they be physician-focused? As in the case of PCMH or just focus on bringing down costs? Many analysts argue that they should not only focus on cost reduction but improving patient quality more on the lines of PCMH. Another important point in the ACO discussion is the fact that there are many payment models in it, which might encourage young physicians to join the model.

Primary care practices should be embracing the concepts and elements of PCMH and transforming their practices in a judicious but robust manner.

While both models may have their flaws, the idea is to improve overall patient care through both of them and reducing the costs at the same time. It will be sooner rather than later when we are able to realize the full potential of these two healthcare models. An increase in patient engagement of late has also enabled better provision of healthcare services to the patients by the physicians. It will definitely lead us into an improved era of healthcare.