Accountable Care Organizations are on the rise, perhaps. Leavitt Partners, a consultancy that has created a “Center for ACO Intelligence,” has found 164 ACOs that have been established since passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Time will tell whether the promise of accountable care can be realized by the new entities, roughly two-thirds of which have been established by hospitals. For now the report delivers two cautionary conclusions. First, it notes a trend toward “proclaiming oneself as an ACO with only modest changes to the care process.” Second, its authors perceived that “defining oneself as an ACO represents an acceptance of the direction the industry has been headed rather than an adoption of a truly new form of care delivery.”

So far, not so good.