Follow the money: How accountable care can detect medical fraud, waste, abuse

Accountable care organizations (ACOs) aim to improve patient care through payment models that reward proactive, coordinated treatments. The ACOs’ ability to dive into patient data can yield another result: detection of patterns that can indicate trends in patient care, including potential waste, fraud and abuse. Accountable for Health CEO Mara McDermott, JD, explains how this comes together.

Medical Economics: You’ve written about accountable care organizations, ACOs and their ability to prevent and detect fraud, waste and abuse. Can you discuss the procedures or policies in place that facilitate that?

Mara McDermott, JD: Sure, and I think that the case study of success around ACOs and fraud, waste and abuse, really comes back to the reason ACOs were formed...