Mount Sinai Health Partners -- a network made up of the Mount Sinai Health System and a voluntary provider group -- has created an accountable care organization with Aetna, the companies announced on Tuesday.
The three-year agreement will allow Aetna commercial plan members who receive care at Mount Sinai to benefit from quality and cost efficiency improvements from the program and establishes a new payment model that will reward physicians for meeting established quality measures.
The partnership is just another step in Mount Sinai's strategy to improve care delivery from traditional fee-for-service models into population health management, by working with health plans like Aetna to improve care value for both the patients and providers.
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"As a health system, we're moving aggressively toward population health," Niyum Gandhi, chief population health officer, Mount Sinai Health System, said. "Our strategy is toward moving into savings for all. When the opportunity came about that aligned incentives around keeping patients healthier - we jumped on it."
Currently, Mount Sinai has ACO arrangements with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Healthfirst and Empire, as well as similar contracts in the works that will be made official throughout the coming year. Mount Sinai hopes to have these arrangements with every insurer in its system.
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"Our goal here is align our incentives across all payers," Gandhi said. "We're arranging resources to keep patients healthy and out of the hospital. This allows us to align the reward model to reap the benefits."
The agreement includes the more than 3,100 Mount Sinai employees and affiliated physicians. Aetna provides benefits to more than 1.1 million members in New York.
"Our new agreement with Mount Sinai puts consumers at the center of a health care system that promotes wellness, provides better care for chronic conditions and uses economic incentives to reward positive health outcomes,” David Kobus, Aetna senior vice president, New York market, said in a statement.
Twitter: @JessiefDavis
