The Patient Protection and the Affordable Health Care Act (“ACA”) is designed to reduce the cost of health care and to improve quality of care. To achieve these goals, the ACA relies, in part, on Accountable Care Organizations (“ACO’s”) in which physicians, hospitals and other health care providers contractually agree to coordinate high quality care and to share in the saving. The ACA also seeks to achieve savings through increased scrutiny of and accountability of physician financial relationships and overpayments. The ACA provisions that impact the daily practice of medicine include:

Mandatory Compliance Plans -

Since 2000, compliance plans for medical practices have been voluntary. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) is in the process of developing rules to require compliance programs as a provider condition for Medicare enrollment...

Originally published in Fall 2013 | AZMedicine.