Former CMS Head McClellan Among Those Named to Board of Directors at New ACO Institute

The National Association of Accountable Care Organizations (NAACOS) has formed an institute to assess and build on the evidence regarding how the shift to value-based care will impact each segment of the healthcare ecosystem. Today, the newly-formed Institute for Accountable Care announced a Board of Directors.

The new institute will be led by a roster of industry experts, including Urban Institute fellow Robert A. Berenson, MD, a former vice chair of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, and Mark McClellan, MD, PhD, who served as Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator from 2004 to 2006.

"To make the kind of informed improvements needed in health care, we must invest in research that advances our knowledge about how to implement accountable care as effectively as possible," McClellan (left) said in a statement.

The Institute lists 4 primary focus areas in its statement:

• Promote collaboration among providers and their organizations to improve population health
• Help healthcare organizations develop successful value-based strategies
• Improve the available data used to assess accountable care strategies
• Test new value-based care approaches

Senior fellow and President Emeritus at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Don Berwick, MD, will also sit on the board. In the statement, he said he plans to “ensure that effective approaches and best practices get into the hands of providers so they can deliver better care to patients.”

Rounding out the board of directors are Clif Gaus, ScD, president and CEO of NAACOS; J. Michael McWilliams, MD, PhD, a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School; Stephen Nuckolls, MAC, the CEO of Coastal Carolina Quality Care, Inc.; Denise Prince, MBA, MPH, SVP, and COO for Population Health at Mount Sinai Health Partners Clinical Operations; Lisa Simpson, MB, BCh, MPH, FAAP, the president and CEO of AcademyHealth; and Barbara Walters, DO, MBA, executive vice president and chief population health officer at

Trinity Health.

The nonprofit institute is based in Washington, DC.