Health Affairs January 19, 2016
Integrating specialty care can be key for high performance and financial success for ACOs, as the most complicated and costly patient care usually is managed by specialists. A large portion of the cost in our health care system is driven by specialists. Specialists are responsible for most medical and surgical procedures, involving both inpatient and outpatient care. Even for office visits, spending for specialists is higher than for primary care physicians. For example, while 45.7 percent of visits to office-based physicians in 2009 were to primary care physicians in general practice, family practice, internal medicine, or pediatrics, they accounted for only 30.4 percent of spending [1].
To understand the challenges and opportunities of integrating specialists, we spoke with eight health...
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