Despite billions of dollars invested in healthcare coordination, most Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are failing to deliver on their core promise of achieving better patient outcomes at lower costs. The concept behind ACOs is compelling. They bring together hospitals, primary care providers, specialists, and post-acute teams under a shared responsibility model to coordinate care across settings and reduce costs through value-based arrangements.

Yet despite this powerful vision, many ACOs find themselves wrestling with the same challenges. Whether operating under Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), ACO REACH arrangements, or commercial contracts, healthcare organizations across the country are discovering that the promise of coordinated care is far more difficult to deliver than initially imagined.

The good news? Artificial intelligence (AI) and data orchestration are emerging as game-changing solutions that can transform struggling ACOs into success stories.

The Biggest ACO Challenges Holding Organizations Back

Data Fragmentation Creates Operational Chaos

One of the major challenges ACOs face is data fragmentation across multiple systems. 77% of ACOs operate across six or more EHRs. This creates a web of disconnected information where claims data flows in from dozens of payers, clinical information is scattered across hospital and practice platforms, and nothing integrates seamlessly.

Large ACOs often receive more than 150 different claims files each month across their various contracts. This data arrives in various formats, with differing coding standards, and at varying intervals. Even organizations that have invested in data lakes or warehouses struggle to clean, normalize, and structure this information quickly enough to make it actionable.

The consequences are severe. Outdated or inconsistent data creates dangerous blind spots in patient care. When encounter data arrives a week late, outreach teams miss crucial follow-up opportunities. When coding is incomplete, risk adjustment scores fail to reflect the true acuity of patient populations, directly impacting shared savings calculations.

Care Coordination Breaks Down Without Real-Time Intelligence

Coordinating care across multiple settings represents the core mission of every ACO, but it remains incredibly difficult without real-time insights into patient status and care gaps.

Consider these common scenarios:

· A patient gets discharged from the hospital but never receives a follow-up appointment.

· A high-risk diabetic becomes overdue for laboratory work, but no one is actively tracking these gaps.

· Transitions from primary care to specialists lack proper handoffs or data continuity, leading to duplicated tests and missed diagnoses.

Even the most dedicated care managers operate with limitations when they lack access to comprehensive patient views. Teams spending hours manually combing through records to identify gaps and close care coordination issues lose valuable time that could be spent on higher-value patient interactions.

The reality is that many ACOs still rely heavily on manual processes to identify care gaps, engage patients effectively, and manage complex care plans. This friction directly contributes to preventable readmissions, missed quality opportunities, and provider burnout.

How AI Analytics Can Transform ACO Success Strategies

Unified Data Platforms Enable Real-Time Decision Making

Modern ACO success strategies begin with implementing unified data platforms capable of ingesting clinical data, claims information, laboratory results, and even SDoH data from multiple sources. These orchestration tools continuously pull in and standardize information from every system, eliminating the delays and fragmentation that plague traditional approaches.

When your data foundation is clean and current, AI models can deliver real-time insights that flag high-risk patients before they require emergency interventions. These systems identify coding opportunities as they emerge and alert care teams to gaps in care as they happen, rather than weeks or months later.

Advanced NLP capabilities can analyze clinical notes to find unstructured signals like social determinants factors or medication adherence issues that would otherwise remain hidden in free-text documentation.

AI in Healthcare Revolutionizes Care Management

Artificial intelligence transforms care management from reactive to proactive. Instead of working from static lists generated days or weeks ago, care managers receive dynamic, prioritized alerts about patients who need immediate attention.

Providers benefit from point-of-care prompts embedded directly into their EHR workflows. These intelligent reminders surface screening requirements, highlight missed risk conditions, and suggest appropriate interventions during patient interaction. The result is more complete documentation, better care delivery, and improved quality metrics.

ACO analytics dashboards update in near-real time, helping leadership teams’ course-correct performance issues before quarterly reporting periods end. This visibility enables proactive management of shared savings targets and quality benchmarks.

Real-World ACO Success Stories with AI Implementation

McLaren ACO faced massive data complexity challenges while managing over 250,000 patients across multiple contracts. By building a centralized data mart and analytics infrastructure, they successfully automated risk stratification processes and enriched their population health analytics capabilities.

The transformation enabled McLaren to deliver actionable insights directly to providers and care teams, moving from retrospective reporting to prospective care management. Their success demonstrates how the right technology foundation can scale effective interventions across large patient populations.

The Future of ACO Success Strategies with AI

The healthcare industry is moving rapidly toward value-based payment models, making effective care coordination and population health management essential for organizational survival. ACOs that embrace AI technology today position themselves for success in an increasingly complex healthcare landscape.

The choice for ACO leadership is not whether to adopt AI technology, but how quickly they can implement intelligent systems that enhance their care coordination capabilities. The organizations that move first will establish sustainable competitive advantages in the value-based care marketplace.

Getting there requires more than just technology. ACOs also need governance frameworks, provider trust, team alignment, and ongoing data quality maintenance. However, AI and intelligent data orchestration provide the essential foundation to scale successful interventions and automate manual processes that consume valuable resources.

At Persivia, we have worked closely with ACOs of all sizes and have seen how the right approach can completely transform outcomes. Our CareSpace® platform is specifically designed to unify, orchestrate, and activate healthcare data to drive value-based care forward. The platform connects care delivery, data analysis, and decision-making processes in one intelligent ecosystem. Read our Customer Stories.

Success in accountable care is no longer about managing more data or hiring more staff. It is about having the right intelligence, delivered to the right people, at the right moment in the care process. AI technology makes this vision achievable for ACOs ready to embrace the future of healthcare delivery.

Join Us at NAACOS Fall 2025

We’re headed to Washington, D.C. for the NAACOS Fall 2025 Conference, October 8–10, and we couldn’t be more excited to connect with ACO leaders shaping the future of value-based care. As a Gold Sponsor, Persivia is bringing practical solutions and proven expertise to help ACOs succeed, no matter where you are on your value-based journey.

Our team knows ACOs inside and out, and we can quickly help you identify quick wins that drive savings, improve outcomes, and reduce provider burden. Whether you’re navigating the transition to MSSP, struggling with data fragmentation, or looking to scale your care coordination capabilities, we’d love to show you how our platform addresses the real challenges ACOs face every day. Ready to transform your ACO’s performance? Discover how CareSpace® unifies your data ecosystem and delivers actionable insights when they matter most.