Medicare Accountable Care Organizations: Quality Performance by Geographic Categories.

Purpose. This policy brief continues the work of the RUPRI Center analyzing the performance of Medicare Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) serving rural areas. In this brief, we examine the differences in performance on four domains of quality measures and the overall quality score among Medicare Shared Savings ACOs with different levels of rural presence. Key Findings. (1) ACOs located in rural counties performed better than those in urban counties on Care Coordination/Patient Safety, Preventive Health, and At-Risk Population domain scores and the overall quality score in 2014. (2) Urban ACOs performed better than ACOs in other geographic categories on the Patient/Caregiver Experience score in 2014. (3) ACOs in all geographic categories improved their quality performance between 2014 and 2015.

Bridging health research and policy: effective dissemination strategies.

UNLABELLED: INVESTIGATED: This study presents findings from a series of focus groups, composed of stakeholders both on Capitol Hill and among national stakeholder organizations, used to identify strategies health services researchers can use for the effective dissemination and expanded use of health services research in health policy. METHODS: Focus groups were created to assess the usefulness of rural health research products and approaches for disseminating information, and in each focus group, respondents were asked for their evaluation of several types of dissemination products and approaches, as well as participants' utilization of research findings. CONCLUSIONS: The focus groups identify strategies that include tailoring products to policymakers' needs, making Research products accessible, expanding working relationships with end users, and investing in greater capacity for dissemination. Implications are drawn for researchers who need to be proactive in thinking about the applications of their research to health policy, and who need to identify and seek resources to help them fund dissemination efforts.