Heartland Rural Physician Alliance

Heartland Rural Physician Alliance (hrpa) ipa is the organizing body which allows independent Rural practices and hospitals to come together to function as an accountable care organization (aco). At the beginning of 2016, hrpa practices began an aco agreement with wellmark bcbs, Iowa's largest commercial insurer. The wellmark aco gives practices access to patient and claims data, as well as technical support and assistance to improve the quality of care provided to patients. The participation also provides many opportunities for advanced learning regarding how to be accountable for healthcare costs while improving the quality of care provided to patients. The aco structure allows for practices to potentially receive shared savings, which has occurred in each year of our aco participation. Heartland's wellmark aco serves more than 6200 beneficiaries, mainly in Rural Iowa. Hrpa also supports the activities of Heartland health aco, a medicare shared savings aco that attempts to improve the healthcare provided to medicare beneficiaries and lower overall costs for those beneficiaries cared for in the aco practices, which are all Heartland rpa members. Hrpa practices have been able to show excellent results on clinical quality and patient satisfaction scores which have generally improved over prior years' results. Heartland health aco serves over 7700 medicare beneficiaries, mostly in Rural Iowa.