Myriad Health Alliance, an accountable care organization of healthcare systems and large physician groups across Mississippi, released its 2020 performance results, showing reductions in its expected cost of care by more than $31.2 million for its 92,600 Medicare beneficiaries. The ACO received a quality score of 97.5% and a sharing rate of 48.75%. The ACO returned a shared savings payment of over $13.7 million to its partners.
“Our 2020 performance demonstrates the power of accountable care to bring together providers, share best practices, and create efficiencies to lower costs and improve the quality of care in Mississippi,” said Alvin Hoover, Chair of Myriad’s Board of Managers and Chief Executive Officer of King’s Daughters Medical Center in Brookhaven. “We are especially proud that these unprecedented savings were realized during a year of extraordinary challenges in health care due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Myriad was founded in 2018. Wholly owned by the members, the infrastructure and governance are centralized and managed through the Board of Managers. Each community, which typically is comprised of a hospital and its affiliated physicians, has an equal share and voice in governance. A standardized approach to care coordination, patient engagement, promotion of evidence-based medicine, and quality reporting has been implemented in each community.
ACOs are groups of physicians, hospitals and other healthcare providers who come together voluntarily to provide coordinated, quality care to Medicare patients. The goal of an ACO is to improve efficiency and coordination of care, resulting in improved care delivery and reduced healthcare costs to both the patient and organization. Patients see the benefit of an ACO through improved communication with their healthcare teams and reduced duplication in paperwork and medical tests. Of the 513 accountable care organizations that participated in the 2020 Medicare Shared Savings Program, 67% earned shared savings payments of nearly $2.3 billion.