With a January 2011 go-live date for an accountable care organization pilot, the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing is entering into the final stages of an RFP process to identify regional organizations that will function as ACOs, the medical homes that will serve as providers within the ACO and a state-wide data and analytics vendor that will provide real-time data to the providers within the ACO.
The Accountable Care Collaborative is part of the Medicaid reform effort in Colorado in which 60,000 Medicaid lives will receive health services through an ACO that will coordinate care and is reimbursed by a per member per month payment and incentives that are aligned to improve health status and reduce avoidable healthcare costs.
Listen to pre-conference comments from Laurel Karabatsos.
During The Colorado Accountable Care Collaborative: Practical Lessons from an ACO in Development, a 45-minute webinar now available as a CD-ROM, via On Demand Web access or as a training DVD, Laurel Karabatsos, deputy Medicaid director and Jerry Smallwood, Medicaid reform unit manager, walked us through the ACO development process in Colorado. From the practical challenges to the processes for addressing these challenges, Karabatsos and Smallwood covered:
- The system changes required before launching an ACO;
- Developing performance measures and an incentives program for year one of the pilot and how these will differ in the expansion year;
- Balancing between prescriptive and permissive in enlisting healthcare providers to be accountable to their outcomes;
- Determining provider payments and payment levels to support an ACO;
- Specific strategies for gaining stakeholder support early in the process;
- Identifying and addressing marketplace resistance; and
- Creating the ACO roll-out plan.
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You can listen to this program right in your office and enjoy significant savings – no travel time or hassle; no hotel expenses. It’s so convenient! Invite your staff members to gather around a conference table to listen to the CD, DVD or the On Demand version.
WHO WILL BENEFIT FROM THIS CONFERENCE?
CEOs, medical directors, health plan executives, hospital executives, clinical and quality improvement executives, disease management directors, managers and coordinators, physician executives, and business development and strategic planning directors.
ABOUT OUR PANELISTS:
Laurel Karabatsos
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Laurel Karabatsos is the deputy Medicaid director at the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing – Colorado’s single state Medicaid agency.
Karabatsos has worked for the department for 10 years as the manager of the quality improvement section, the Medicaid program division director and has recently been designated as the deputy Medicaid director.
In the capacity of deputy Medicaid director, Karabatsos is responsible for oversight of all Medicaid acute care services and programs including policy development and implementation. She is currently overseeing the department’s efforts to reform the Medicaid program through implementation of the Accountable Care Collaborative program. This program is a hybrid model, adding characteristics of a regional accountable care organization to a primary care case management system.
Karabatsos holds a master’s degree in Organizational Management from the University of Phoenix and a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Women’s Studies from the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colo.
Jerry Smallwood
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Jerry Smallwood is the manager of the Medicaid Reform Unit at the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and
Financing. He has worked for the department for six years.
Prior to his current position with the department, Smallwood was the manager of the managed care benefits section.
Smallwood has over 30 years of experience managing benefit programs and healthcare programs for a variety of private
corporations ranging from health care organizations to engineering companies. His experience has included designing healthcare
programs, contracting for fully-insured health care programs and the designing and funding of self- funded programs utilizing
administrative services.
