Clark Fork Valley Hospital joins NARCO group

PLAINS – The Clark Fork Valley Hospital and Family Medical Network recently joined an initiative to bring better, cheaper, healthcare to medicare recipients after deciding to participate in the area’s National Rural ACO 23 LLC. 

According to a letter by Dr. Hanson, Chief Executive Officer of the hospital, to the staff, the Department of Health and Human Services set a goal of tying 30 percent of fee-for-service medical payments to healthcare quality, among other things, by using alternate payment models; some of these alternatives include use of an ACO or bundled payment arrangements.

The deadline for providers to meet the 30 percent goal is the end of 2016. There is an additional step of 50 percent of payments on the new models by the end of 2018.

The letter noted that, overall, there were high hopes under the new program.

“HHS believes its movement towards the above payment models will cause organizations to have a sharper focus on the “Triple Aim,”” Hanson said in the letter. “I believe this is the biggest benefit to CFVH.” 

Hanson noted, in the past, a group of rural hospital leaders recognized that the typical way of forming ACOs left smaller organizations unable to participate; as a result, many groups, like rural hospitals and clinics, were left to step back and find a similar solution on their own. This was how the National Rural Accountable Care Organization came into being.

The area’s branch of the NRACO has 13 participating hospitals in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. They were recently chosen as one of 100 new organizations to become Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs working on an initiative to bring high-quality, coordinated care to medicare recipients around the country. In all, there are approximately 430 groups participating in the program.

ACOs were first created so health care providers could push a coordinated front to provide the best health care without the costs rising out of control.

“People across America are going to be better cared for when they go to their health care providers, because these hospitals and providers have made a commitment to innovation, a commitment to change how they do business and care for patients,” said Sylvia Matthews Burwell, secretary of HHS, in a press release. “Medicare, and the health care system as a whole, is moving toward paying providers based on the quality, rather than just the quantity, of care they give patients.” 

A flier with more information on the NRACO and the expected changes the patients will see will be available at the hospital and clinic.