An organization made up of 6,700 physicians and other clinicians across Michigan has saved the Medicare system $35 million in a single year, and $272 million since its founding 12 years ago, newly released data show.
The organization, called Physician Organization of Michigan ACO, or POM ACO, has just earned $17 million to be shared with those providers as an incentive for their achievements in 2024.
POM ACO takes part in the Medicare Shared Savings Program run by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The MSSP program awards incentives to accountable care organizations, or ACOs, that achieve savings goals and quality benchmarks in the care of people covered by traditional Medicare.
POM ACO clinicians received the incentive for the care they provided to 57,380 Medicare beneficiaries in 2024.
The clinicians include physicians and other health professionals across Michigan Medicine, including University of Michigan Health, UM Health-Sparrow, UM Health-West and MyMichigan Health. POM ACO also includes several practices affiliated with Oakland Southfield Physicians that serve southeast Michigan.
POM ACO participants work together to manage the care of traditional Medicare participants in a way that reduces unnecessary spending – such as on preventable hospitalizations or emergency department visits – while also focusing on preventive care and effective care of chronic conditions.
Because POM ACO surpassed savings and quality goals set out by CMS, its member groups will share in the savings they achieved. That will allow them to recognize the efforts mentioned above, and provide a means to invest in even more programs and services to improve care and spend Medicare dollars wisely in coming years.
“We’re proud of what we’ve achieved together, because we know it means that tens of thousands of older Michiganders can receive high-quality care, while also making the best use of Medicare funding,” said Brook Watts, M.D., M.S., FACP, Michigan Medicine’s chief quality officer, interim ACO executive of POM ACO, and a professor at the U-M Medical School.
Kirah Kingsland, M.H.A., chief operating officer for POM ACO, also notes that other patients benefit from the systems and services put in place for POM ACO, not just those with traditional Medicare coverage.
“Our performance results are a testament to the collective effort of everyone involved in this work,” she said. “We strive to promote value-based care and align our ACO work with strategies that can lead to benefits for all patients receiving care. We are very proud of our partner organizations and clinicians who carry out this work each day.”
In the year reflected, POM ACO member groups put great effort into:
- helping patients control blood pressure and blood sugar if they are elevated; increasing depression and suicide risk screening; and ensuring that the long-term blood sugar readings, called A1C levels, of beneficiaries with diabetes were under control;
- increasing the number of patients who see a primary care physician within two weeks of being hospitalized or having a stay in a nursing home and working to prevent readmissions;
- enrolling high-risk patients in care management programs to help them navigate their care better; and
- piloting a program to use telehealth appointments with pharmacists for patients who take six or more medications, have certain complex conditions or have a recent hospital stay or emergency department visit.
Also in 2024, POM ACO launched a free online learning course for health care providers of all kinds, to help them understand what accountable care organizations are and how they can improve care and give providers an opportunity to share in savings they achieve for the Medicare system.
The free course is available at https://www.pom-aco.com/provider-information and includes the opportunity for licensed providers to earn continuing education credits.
Medicare beneficiaries interested in learning more about ACOs, and how these organizations impact the care they receive, can also access a POM ACO published guide.
In all, 10 million Americans are covered by one of 476 MSSP ACOs. In 2024, these ACOs earned $4.1 billion and saved Medicare $2.5 billion from projected benchmark spending. Read more about national 2024 results for all such ACOs here.
Michigan Medicine helped lay the foundation for the accountable care movement, by taking part in the successful Medicare Physician Group Practice Demonstration Project from 2005 to 2011.