Making the leap: medical group leaders tackle the enormous strategic IT challenges ahead

This summer, HCI's Editor-in-Chief Mark Hagland interviewed leaders of medical group organizations from across the country to get a sense of where their leaders are right now with regard to laying the strategic information technology foundations for the "new healthcare,"as its being called: the shift away from volume-based fee-for-service patient care delivery and reimbursement, and towards a more measured, standardized, responsive, accountable, and transparent healthcare system. Among the numerous emerging vehicles for that care are accountable care organizations (both within the Medicare Shared Savings Program, and between private health insurers and providers), bundled payment-based contracts, patient-centered medical homes, population health initiatives, value-based purchasing programs, and others. Fortunately the Supreme Court's affirmation in June of the constitutionality of the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) has created greater policy clarity around many of these vehicles, with the ACA's provisions for accountable care organizations (ACOs), bundled payment-based contracts, patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs), and value-based purchasing now moving forward with renewed certainty