Kings Fund, 22 March 2016
- An ACO brings together a number of providers to take responsibility for the cost and quality of care for a defined population within an agreed budget. ACOs take many different forms ranging from fully integrated systems to looser alliances and networks of hospitals, medical groups and other providers.
- ACOs have evolved recently in the United States and they build on a much longer history of integrated care systems such as Kaiser Permanente and Intermountain Healthcare.
- They are of particular interest to the NHS as a practical expression of ‘place-based’ working under which NHS organisations and their partners agree to collaborate in order to meet the needs of the population they serve.
- Read about how ACOs are developing in the USA on the Commonwealth Fund website here.
