The last decade has seen the towering success and maturity of accountable care organizations (ACOs), thanks to their exclusive focus on achieving high-quality care at a comparatively low cost. To be eligible to participate in an ACO, participating physicians must care for a minimum of 5,000 Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries. This of course is a limiting factor to independent practitioners, as they would not typically meet the minimum required Medicare patients. To combat this, ACOs have grown networks of independent physicians, alliances of care providers, and independent hospitals, which are typically all equipped with unique specialties, abilities, and capacity to handle their patient population.
