How Accountable Care Organizations Use Population Segmentation to Care for High-Need, High-Cost Patients

New payment and care delivery models such as accountable care organizations (ACOs) have prompted health care delivery systems to better meet the requirements of their high-need, high-cost (HNHC) patients.

To explore how a group of mature ACOs are seeking to match patients with appropriate interventions by segmenting HNHC populations with similar needs into smaller subgroups.

Semistructured telephone interviews with 34 leaders from 18 mature ACOs and 10 national experts knowledgeable about risk stratification and segmentation.

ACOs use a range of approaches to segment their HNHC patients. Although there was no consistent set of subgroups for HNHC patients across ACOs, there were some common ones. Respondents noted that when primary care clinicians were engaged in refining segmentation approaches, there was an increase in both the clinical relevance of the results as well as the willingness of frontline providers to use them. Population segmentation results informed ACOs’ understanding of program needs, for example, by helping them better understand what skill sets and staff were needed to deliver enhanced care management. Findings on how mature ACOs are segmenting their HNHC population can improve the future development of more systematic approaches.