An Accountable Care Organization is one way of forming better coordination of care by using a group of providers and hospitals that work together and communicate with each other in collaboration with the patient to make better health care decisions. The goal is patient-centered care, in other words, the patient is the center of a network of a group of doctors, hospitals and other healthcare provider that work together to provide the best quality care for each individual patient. This network of experts work to keep cost low by providing individualized care specific to the patient, which allows less opportunity for costly treatments and tests that are not needed. Their teamwork improves communication between providers and specialists and can be beneficial to all parties involved.

The Patient-Centered Medical Home or PCMH’s main goal is to improve the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of care delivered while focusing on individual and specific needs of patient’s. The idea is that primary care is coordinated, comprehensive, team-based and accessible while remaining focused on quality and safety. The medical home sets out to achieve primary care excellence by allowing the primary care provider to lead a team of specialists, nurses and other healthcare providers in collaboration with the patient and his or her family to coordinate individualized care to meet all of the patient’s health needs. The objective is to improve communication through use of information technology and health information exchange to assure that patients receive the indicated care when and where needed and wanted.

While both ACO’s and PCMH’s both rely on primary-care physicians to coordinate care across the healthcare continuum and both aim to improve individualized clinical outcomes, the differences vary. PCMH seeks to transform primary-care practices to provide enhanced preventive