“Will Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) work?”
That question has been thrown around for years, serving as fodder for Twitter-fights, myriad health care blog posts, and hours of beer-soaked barroom debates (if you’re shameless as I am). Adding to the discussion are Clayton Christensen, Jeffrey Flier, and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan (or CFV, as I’ll refer to them), of Harvard Business School, Harvard Medical School, and Innosight fame, respectively.
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, they answer the question with a resounding “No.” But, in doing so, they treat ACOs and other health care delivery mechanisms – part of what I’ll call the “New New Thing in Health Care” – as mutually exclusive. Contra CFV, ACOs may help spur the exact disruptive innovation in health care that Christensen is known for discussing.