“From a standing start two years ago, there are now more than 300 ACOs in existence, with some yielding promising early results,” Harris Meyer explains to open the November issue of Health Affairs. This month’s journal features a grouping of articles that examine the successes and challenges of the accountable care model. Authors provide insights on appropriate measures for evaluating ACOs, potential implementation obstacles, early results from pilot sites, and reasons for skepticism. The journal moves on to address costs and quality, with a collection of articles on measures and outcomes scores, the impact of state unemployment on Medicare spending, and modifiable health risk factors that are linked to more spending. One article looks at an interesting factor for health spending: physician experience. The authors studied cost profiles from various health plans and found that “physicians with fewer than ten years of experience had 13.2 percent higher overall costs than physicians with 40 or more years of experience.” This kind of analysis is relatively new, and the authors note that their findings suggest that we need more research of physician practice patterns. In addition, the journal includes a variety of other articles on medical homes, nursing, and lessons from China. The following AcademyHealth members had their work featured in this month’s issue: A Framework For Evaluating The Formation, Implementation, And Performance Of Accountable Care Organizations Elliott S. Fisher, Stephen M. Shortell, and Aricca D. Van Citters Insights From Transformations Under Way At Four Brookings-Dartmouth Accountable Care Organization Pilot Sites Aricca D. Van Citters, Kathleen L. Carluzzo, Frances M. Wu, Stephen M. Shortell, and Elliott S. Fisher ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY: Accountable Care Organizations May Have Difficulty Avoiding The Failures Of Integrated Delivery Networks Of The 1990s Lawton R. Burns Physicians With The Least Experience Have Higher Cost Profiles Than Do Physicians With The Most Experience Ateev Mehrotra, Rachel O. Reid, John L. Adams, Mark W. Friedberg, Elizabeth A. McGlynn, and Peter S. Hussey Ten Modifiable Health Risk Factors Are Linked To More Than One-Fifth Of Employer-Employee Health Care Spending Rachel M. Henke INNOVATION PROFILE: A New Tool To Give Hospitalists Feedback To Improve Interprofessional Teamwork And Advance Patient Care Brian Hess The Longer The Shifts For Hospital Nurses, The Higher The Levels Of Burnout And Patient Dissatisfaction Amy Witkoski Stimpfel and Linda H. Aiken Supplemental Nurses Are Just As Educated, Slightly Less Experienced, And More Diverse Compared To Permanent Nurses Ying Xue, Deborah A. Freund, and Linda H. Aiken Success Of Program Linking Data Sources To Monitor H1N1 Vaccine Safety Points To Potential For Even Broader Safety Surveillance Grace Lee, Richard Platt, and Tracy Lieu Proposed ‘Grant-And-Access’ Program With Price Caps Could Stimulate Development Of Drugs For Very Rare Diseases Shelby D. Reed and Kevin A. Schulman Health Affairs is an official journal of AcademyHealth.