Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are best described as:

• A. They focus on increasing hospital profits regardless of quality.
• B. They coordinate care by routing all patients to a single facility.
• C. They are government-run hospital networks.
• D. Groups of providers working together to coordinate care and share savings from improved quality and lower costs.

Answer: (D)

Accountable Care Organizations are about groups of providers working together to coordinate care for a defined patient population and to be held accountable for the cost and quality of that care. They bring together primary care physicians, specialists, hospitals, and sometimes post-acute providers to manage patients across the care continuum—preventive services, primary and specialty care, hospital stays, and follow‑up after discharge. The payoff is a shared savings model: if the group delivers high-quality care while reducing unnecessary spending, they share the savings with the participating providers. Some arrangements also involve taking on financial risk if costs exceed targets, which reinforces the focus on efficiency and outcomes.

This description fits best because it captures the collaborative, cross‑setting care coordination and the incentive to improve quality while lowering costs through shared savings. The other options describe scenarios that don’t align with how ACOs are designed—focusing on profits at the expense of quality, routing all patients to a single facility, or being government‑run networks—none of which reflect the collaborative, performance-based, shared-savings structure of ACOs.