It may be awhile before policymakers know if Accountable Care Organizations will fulfill their promise of lowering the cost of health care while improving outcomes, but experts have recently released health reform reports that take the concept and build on it.

 The latest example was highlighted in a report issued April 29 by the Brookings Institution. The reform report called for the creation of a Medicare Comprehensive Care system in which teams of providers would deliver coordinated care and receive one payment for the entire scope of patient services.

The report said MCC organizations would include collaborations of providers that would receive a globally capitated, comprehensive payment for treating beneficiaries, and they would have to meet a set of care quality and outcome performance measures for full payment.  

 Structural requirements for these contractual organizations would be flexible; the organizations could include integrated systems or networks of providers working together, the report said.

 The Brookings report followed a report issued April 18 by the Bipartisan Policy Center that called for the creation of Medicare Networks- essentially a stronger version of accountable care networks included in the Affordable Care Act.

The first results from ACOs will be available this summer, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.