Which healthcare delivery program was introduced by the Affordable Care Act to incentivize quality care among providers?

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) introduced Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) as a transformative approach aimed at incentivizing healthcare providers to deliver high-quality care while controlling costs. ACOs are groups of doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers that voluntarily come together to provide coordinated care to their patients. The primary objective of ACOs is to ensure that patients receive the right care at the right time, which helps to avoid unnecessary service duplication and medical errors.

By promoting the sharing of information and collaboration across various providers within an ACO, the program encourages a focus on preventive care and improved patient health outcomes. Moreover, ACOs are financially incentivized; they can receive shared savings if they manage to reduce health care spending while meeting or exceeding quality performance standards. This aligns financial incentives with the delivery of high-quality care, making ACOs an essential element of the ACA's goals for healthcare reform.

The other options, while important in various contexts, do not specifically embody the ACO model. The Patient-Centered Medical Home focuses on primary care coordination and comprehensive care but does not have the same financial alignment as ACOs. The Care Coordination Program and the Fee-for-Service model do not incentivize quality in the same structured way as A