By FARZAD MOSTASHARI, MD

On June 18, we launched Aledade – a company built on our belief that independent primary care physicians are best positioned to lead the next revolution in health care delivery – boosting quality of care and bringing down costs.  Over the past six weeks, we traveled across the country meeting doctors, discussing the future of independent primary care practice, and recruiting physician partners for our first wave of Accountable Care Organizations.

Meeting these doctors, from areas and backgrounds as diverse as the populations they serve has been a constant reminder of the reasons we founded this company.  One physician, having spent decades serving the same community from the same office, lamented that in the past, he felt more involved – and more informed – about all aspects of his patients’ care.  Today, he told us, fragmentation in care delivery had given him less insight into his patients’ health, and less influence in coordinating their treatment.

When we started Aledade, these were the type of doctors we wanted to empower.

Today, I am elated to announce that we have formally submitted applications to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services to form ACOs serving physicians in Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Arkansas for 2015.  We expect this first wave of Aledade ACOs to serve tens of thousands of Medicare patients beginning January 2015.

The choice of four dissimilar states was intentional. We intend to establish a model that can be replicated across the country, and the diversity in our practices matches the diversity of our country. Each state has strengths to build on. Delaware- ‘the First State’ has been a leader in electronic health record implementation. Maryland and New York’s health reforms set the stage for alignment and collaboration with acute-care facilities. Arkansas’ tradition of independent primary care practice is strong. We’ll also be serving very different patient populations in each state – from practices that serve urban neighborhoods to those that treat folks in small towns and rural communities.

In all four states, we will spend the next five months working closely with our physician partners to tailor custom administrative and technological solutions for their practice needs and help accelerate practice transformation.  Our previous work in policy and outreach has already given us some ideas about how physician-led ACOs can best leverage the value-over-volume care delivery model, and there’s been a great deal of writing on the advantages of physician-led ACOs. But we also know that successful ACOs are built specifically for the communities they serve.  That’s why we will develop tools for our doctors with the unique needs of their practices – and his or her patients – in mind.

As we do, we will focus on three key areas:

Greater Availability to Patients.   Doctor availability and attention to patient needs are not just the key to patient satisfaction; they also are important to avoiding hospital admissions and more serious medical issues down the road.  So we’ll also be encouraging our physicians to place a greater emphasis on wellness visits and preventative medicine – and helping them to do that in as an efficient and effective way as possible.

Tools to Succeed.  I’ve said many times: in today’s health care marketplace, technology is necessary – but not sufficient – for success.  Data doesn’t solve health care problems by itself, but the right information and the right technology can empower doctors to manage patient care, notice trends, and address medical issues before they become serious.  Our team has over two decades with cloud-based medical platforms and electronic health records (EHR) – we know the functionality needed.  Our CTO Edwin Miller will team up with each individual ACO to customize the technological solutions that fit best, and work with doctors and their staff to continually optimize how those tools are used and effectively integrate the EHRs into the practice’s workflow.  We are committed to the success of our doctors, and technology will be a huge part of that commitment.

Passion to Lead Change.  When recruiting partners, we sought out independent physicians eager to participate in – and lead – the trends transforming our health care system.  Doctors in each of our ACOs will work together to explore opportunities for improvement, and share ideas for improving practice operations, technology, and patient management.  We want our doctors to communicate and exchange best practices – we expect to learn a great deal from their daily experience, and we expect them to be active partners in the process of continual improvement.

We founded Aledade on the belief that physician-led ACOs can be the leading edge of health care transformation in the United States.  Our doctor partners share that belief and are equally eager to prove that hypothesis right.

This first wave of sign-ups is over, but we’ll continue to sign up new practices in other states across the country. That means we now have to build as we grow – and we couldn’t be more excited to start.