November 5, 2026
For rural and community health organizations, the shift to value-based care brings both challenges and opportunities. Organizations are caring for more people with chronic conditions while navigating limited access to specialty care, rising costs and changing payment models. At the same time, value-based care can improve care coordination, strengthen health outcomes and support investments in services that promote patients’ long-term well-being.
To help community health organizations navigate this transition, OCHIN and Community Care Cooperative (C3) partnered to offer a Medicare Accountable Care Organization (ACO). This collaboration combines OCHIN’s consultative support and more than 25 years of health IT expertise with C3’s experience in value-based care, helping organizations strengthen care management and coordination for a growing number of Medicare-eligible patients nationwide.
For Neighborhood Health Center, an OCHIN member since 2008, the opportunity to join the OCHIN and C3 Medicare ACO came at a pivotal point in their value-based care journey. The organization had spent several years preparing for value-based contracts and exploring potential partners, but finding one that offered the right combination of shared values, expertise, guidance and affordability remained a challenge.
Neighborhood Health Center serves a predominantly rural population across three clinical sites in Indiana, providing primary care and mental health services. Eighty-two percent of their patients live at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, and 61% are covered by Medicare or Medicaid.
Carrie Miles, CEO of Neighborhood Health Center, shares why the ACO opportunity felt like the right fit, how OCHIN and C3 helped them evaluate their options and what she hopes the partnership will mean for the patients and communities they serve.
What made value-based care a priority for Neighborhood Health Center?
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ push toward value-based care has been on our radar for the past several years. We’ve always strived to provide high-quality care, but over the past four to five years, we’ve become even more intentional about how we measure and support quality care.
As a small rural organization, we wanted to partner with a network that could provide the expertise and guidance we needed to make the transition successful. We knew we wanted to take this next step, but finding the right partner was critical.
Why did the OCHIN and C3 Medicare ACO feel like the right fit?
Many of our patients face significant barriers to accessing specialty care, either because they have difficulty getting to appointments, cannot afford them or have limited access to specialists in our rural area. We have relatively few specialists, particularly endocrinologists and pulmonologists, so our primary care providers often have to manage complex conditions with limited specialty support.
We serve approximately 6,500 unique patients each year, which made entering a direct ACO contract challenging for an organization of our size; so, when OCHIN and C3 announced this opportunity, it felt like a no-brainer.
We had been working toward value-based care and evaluating options, but we needed a way to move forward that made sense for our organization. OCHIN and C3 brought us an opportunity that addressed those needs in a way we hadn’t imagined.
It truly felt like receiving a gift we didn’t even know to ask for.
How did OCHIN and C3 help you evaluate the opportunity?
OCHIN and C3 were amazing. They took the time to walk us through our options, explain the pros and cons and show us data specific to us. That was especially helpful because we didn’t want to evaluate an opportunity based on the experience of a health center in another state with a very different patient population and different numbers. We needed to understand what the opportunity could look like for us.
They also took the time to educate us about the ACO and explain the assumptions behind the projections. I’m not an expert in value-based care. I’m still learning, and we’re all learning, so having that level of transparency and guidance was invaluable.
Our longstanding relationship with OCHIN also made a difference. I could ask questions such as, “What are you seeing? What have you seen work? Where have you seen health centers struggle?” The team really helped us understand the considerations and pointed us in the right direction.
What are you most excited about as the OCHIN and C3 ACO moves forward?
I think I’m most excited about the three-way partnership focused on patients. The goal is excellence and keeping our patients out of the hospital, meeting them where they are and improving their quality of life.
Our hope is that over time, we learn a lot and find unique and special ways to provide care that we can eventually extend to all our patients. That’s where our hopes and plans for the future lie.
I don’t think there’s a better partnership than OCHIN and C3 for us at this juncture. I’m really excited to see everything come together in a creative new way. To look at patient care and how we take care of a population using technology and the best practices from a clinical standpoint.
I believe this ACO is going to be a game changer for how we provide care for our patients.
Explore the OCHIN and C3 Medicare ACO
The OCHIN and C3 Medicare ACO was designed with community health organizations in mind. Neighborhood Health Center’s journey illustrates how a community health organization can transition to value-based care with support that recognizes the unique needs of rural and community health care.
If your organization is considering value-based care, you don’t have to navigate this journey alone. Learn more about the OCHIN and C3 Medicare ACO to see if this opportunity could benefit your organization and the patients you serve.
