Heartland Health ACO

Heartland Health Aco was organized in 2018, went through the mssp Aco application process with cms, was approved and began operations as a medicare shared savings Aco on july 1, 2019. Many of the member practices had some previous Aco experience, but this was a new combination of practices under hhaco. The Aco board as well as the compliance and quality/medical management committees were formed, policies and procedure were developed and adopted, and the work on the Aco began.work began to improve quality of care provided to medicare beneficiaries, with practices getting connected to our population Health platform, the garage, in order to track and improve quality of care. Additionally, we began to receive claims data from cms, which was also loaded into the garage for practices to begin to use to address cost. Monthly calls/meetings were held with practices to direct and support the cost and quality work. Education was provided to practices to improve performance. The hhaco contract with cms runs through december 31, 2024.