Accountable Care Organizations: Will They Deliver?

This brief examines accountable care organizations—groupings of diverse health care providers that care for a group of people and aim to create a cohesive framework, encourage accountability, and create incentives and rewards to providers that focus on the overall scope of patient care. It examines ACOs’ role in improving, integrating, and coordinating care delivered by multiple providers. It also places ACOs in the historical context of health care reform in the United States to draw lessons from history on the challenges to be encountered and potential strategies for making ACOs more successful.