The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [PPACA] created a new model of health care delivery called the Accountable Care Organization. The ACO is designed to give doctors and hospitals incentives to become accountable for a population of patients and to re-design processes that provide for coordinated care, high quality and efficient service delivery. Personal behavior and social and environmental factors have great impact on overall health. ACOs which are made up of doctor and hospital organizations must look to coordinate and integrate with other types of providers in order to impact overall population health. This is difficult for a number of reasons including sharing financial incentives, communicating and sharing patient health information and overcoming the cultural managerial aspects of different organizations. ACO leaders describe how they have integrate with other providers and whether the results show an improvement for a population of patients served by their organization.

This research includes a review of the literature concerning how ACOs are achieving integration with other providers and the results of the integration. The result is recommendations on the best practices for achieving provider integration based on evidence of improved patient health.