ACOs and Delivering Care for Older Adults: Two Recent Articles That Caught Our Attention
“What We Can Learn by Listening to Older Adults”
Chris Langston, a program director at the John A. Hartford Foundation, penned a recent Prepared Patient Blog post that resides on the Center for Advancing Health (CFAH) website. It refers to what many of us have learned from our work in patient advocacy which points to the dilemmas for the best ways to deliver health care for the older adults in our society. In all chronic disease management, but especially for our older populations (who are likely to have multiple health conditions in addition to cancer) the need for coordinated care among primary and specialty medical providers is essential. The blog also points to the John A Hartford Foundation’s latest public poll results “On Your Team,” which we encourage you to read. In the analysis of their poll and other data from RAND, Langston finds that “when patients feel engaged, supported, and in control of their health, physicians and other health care researchers and providers consider it a strong and valuable predictor of improved future health and decreased use of costly clinical outcomes. . . which do not come from more care, but they happen when the patient and his or her family feel involved in their care in meaningful ways. . .and by including the patient in the design and practice of patient-centered care may be just what the doctor ordered.”
Read “What We Can Learn from Older Adults” >>
Kaiser Health News FAQ on ACOs
Kaiser Health News recently posted some frequently asked questions regarding Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) that we found to be of value. The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship is part of a PCORI grant that is looking to create an accredited ACO model for a patient-centered cancer medical home and we feel that this article is a good primer for those less familiar with the concept.
