As introduced in our May 2018 e-newsletter, UT Health San Antonio recently established an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) called the UT Health San Antonio Regional Physician Network™.  An ACO is a group of physicians, hospitals and other health care providers who voluntarily join together in a mission to deliver coordinated, high-quality health care to Medicare patients.

The goal of coordinated care is to ensure patients receive the right care at the right time, while avoiding unnecessary duplication of services and preventing potential medical errors. UT Health has a tradition of providing outstanding health care and leading innovation. The demand to move from a “fee-for-service” model to a “value-based” model requires organizations, like ours, to be transformative and develop new ways to provide excellent health care while continuing to meet payer and patient demands. UT Health’s new ACO is a forward-thinking strategy rooted in truly delivering positive results for our patient by driving excellent clinical outcomes while containing costs. When an ACO succeeds in both, delivering high-quality care and prudently spending health care dollars, all ACO members will share in the savings it achieves for its combined population of Medicare patients.

While UT Health San Antonio Regional Physician Network officially begins in January 2019, we are off to a great start as we have already added 12 community primary care practices as participants with us. We are not “acquiring” any of these practices; they have agreed to be members of our ACO, the UT Health San Antonio Regional Physicians Network. Aside from their shared savings, each of these practices will benefit by receiving preferred scheduling of their patients with our specialty care. In turn, we will collaborate with them on identifying any health care gaps which may exist in their practice

It is this collaboration which will allow UT Health Physicians and community physicians to ensure efficient delivery of health care in a rapidly changing health care marketplace and allow continued brand relevance and preference for UT Health San Antonio. For more information about UT Health San Antonio Regional Physician Network, visit UTHealthRegionalPhysicianNetwork.org.