Care Coordination & Referrals

Care coordination is becoming the operational center of value-based care strategy, as CMS’ ACCESS Model moves chronic-condition management further toward tech-enabled, longitudinal support while ACO REACH savings results reinforce the business case for accountable-care infrastructure that can manage referrals, transitions, and specialist use at scale. Providers and risk-bearing partners are also tightening governance around episode and specialty models—CJR-X, kidney care, MSK, home health, and post-acute networks—because downstream visibility and referral discipline are increasingly decisive for total-cost performance, not just quality improvement. The strategic tension for VBC stakeholders is whether digital health firms, ACOs, and post-acute/home-based providers can integrate into physician workflows fast enough to meet CMS’ care-management expectations without adding fragmentation or administrative burden, particularly as ACCESS launches in July