Accountable Care Organizations
Blue Shield of California is committed to improving healthcare delivery. One of the ways we do this is through our Accountable Care Organization (ACO) program.
We collaborate with doctors and hospitals to improve patient care and reduce healthcare costs. Our ACOs are designed to increase patient engagement, improve quality of care, decrease overall costs, and maximize satisfaction for our members, employer groups, brokers and providers.
See our ACO Directory for a full list of collaborations.
ACOs provide value-based care
ACOs move health care from a system in which doctors and hospitals are paid based on the number of services they deliver to one in which they are paid for keeping people healthy in an evidence-based, cost-effective way – a system known as value-based care.
Our results
We launched our first ACO in 2010 and have been expanding ever since. We now have more than 44 ACOs in 23 regions, serving 600,000 Californians. Since it began, Blue Shield’s ACO program has:
- Reduced hospital admissions by 17%
- Decreased days that patients stay in the hospital by 16%
- Saved more than $486 million in estimated healthcare costs
- Reduced patient re-admissions by 13%
- Reduced ER visits by 7%
