Board will coordinate improved care, improved population health, and lower cost growth for Vermont’s statewide ACO
COLCHESTER, VT – OneCare Vermont has announced the membership of its Clinical Advisory Board (CAB), an entity charged with creating a coordinated, consistent approach to improving the quality and monitoring the cost of care delivered to approximately one-third of Vermont’s Medicare Fee-for-Service beneficiaries attributed to the OneCare Vermont Accountable Care Organization (ACO).
This Board is composed of physician clinical leaders representing most service areas of OneCare Vermont and is designed to foster participation in the clinical development of OneCare Vermont at the local level, with all participants having an equal voice. Board representatives will serve as the primary point of contact on behalf of the CAB for participant organizations in their Hospital Service Areas (HSA), and serve as local chair conveners of regional Clinical Performance Committees (CPCs) as necessary.
The CAB will be co-chaired by Barbara Walters, D.O., chief medical officer of OneCare Vermont and executive medical director, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, and Norman Ward, M.D., Family Medicine physician and executive medical director for Accountable Care, Fletcher Allen Health Care.
The CAB will be responsible for developing the OneCare Vermont Clinical Model to achieve high quality, coordinated, and efficient health care throughout the system. This Model will also develop processes and procedures for quality and cost control based on shared principles of quality performance measurement, case management, and clinical data sharing.
The Board includes 31 voting members – the co-chairs, 24 HSA representatives, and five physician members who represent key continuum of care services: emergency medicine, hospital medicine, geriatrics, radiology, psychiatry and palliative care. The initial Board terms are expected to be three years.
The CAB will also consult with a group of physicians representing specialties in pulmonology, cardiology, medical oncology, neurology, orthopedics, vascular, endocrinology, pathology and critical care.
Members were selected through a nomination process, whereby network participants submitted names of respected physician leaders in their communities for consideration to OneCare Vermont. The membership was approved by the OneCare Vermont Board of Managers at their April 15 meeting.
About OneCare Vermont
OneCare Vermont is a state-wide accountable care organization (ACO). ACOs are entities created through the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act and are composed of groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers, who join together voluntarily to provide coordinated high-quality care to the Medicare Fee-for-Service patients they serve. Coordinated care helps ensure that patients get the right care at the right time, with the goal of avoiding unnecessary duplication of services.
OneCare Vermont is headed up by two non-profit academic medical centers, Dartmouth-Hitchcock and Fletcher Allen Health Care, both of whom will provide highly specialized care when needed and serve as resources to help OneCare Vermont fulfill its promise.
An ACO is not a health insurance plan or a health maintenance organization (HMO). An ACO doesn't affect Medicare benefits or which providers a patient can choose to see. ACOs put the doctor and patient in charge of patient care, not insurance companies.
###
Editor’s Note:
Representatives from the Central Vermont Medical Center service area (HSA) to the Clinical Advisory Board (CAB) are:
- Dr. Mark Depman, Medical Director of CVMC Emergency Department
- Dr. Bram Starr, primary care physician at Associates in Family Health, a member of the CVMC Medical Group