Applying Organizational Learning Research to Accountable Care Organizations

To accomplish the goal of improving quality of care while simultaneously reducing cost, Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) need to find new and better ways of providing health care to populations of patients. This requires implementing best practices and improving collaboration across the multipl...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Medical care research and review 2016-12, Vol.73 (6), p.673-684
Main Authors: Nembhard, Ingrid M., Tucker, Anita L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accountable care organizations
Accountable Care Organizations - organization & administration
Best practice
Care delivery
Collaboration
Continuity of Patient Care - organization & administration
Cooperative Behavior
Corporate culture
Expectations
Frame analysis
Health care
Humans
In care
Learning
Medicare - organization & administration
Occupational health
Organizational aspects
Organizational Culture
Organizational learning
Organizations
Patients
Quality of care
Quality of Health Care - organization & administration
Risk Sharing, Financial
Teams
United States
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:To accomplish the goal of improving quality of care while simultaneously reducing cost, Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) need to find new and better ways of providing health care to populations of patients. This requires implementing best practices and improving collaboration across the multiple entities involved in care delivery, including patients. In this article, we discuss seven lessons from the organizational learning literature that can help ACOs overcome the inherent challenges of learning how to work together in radically new ways. The lessons involve setting expectations, creating a supportive culture, and structuring the improvement efforts. For example, with regard to setting expectations, framing the changes as learning experiences rather than as implementation projects encourages the teams to utilize helpful activities, such as dry runs and pilot tests. It is also important to create an organizational culture where employees feel safe pointing out improvement opportunities and experimenting with new ways of working. With regard to structure, stable, cross-functional teams provide a powerful building block for effective improvement efforts. The article concludes by outlining opportunities for future research on organizational learning in ACOs.
ISSN:1077-5587
1552-6801
DOI:10.1177/1077558716640415