Restructuring, consolidation in health care make reform top US health law issue for 2010

Health care reform in the USA will change, if not send shock waves through, virtually the entire field of health care law. That is the consensus of 24 health law practitioners from BNA's Health Law Reporter advisory board, in a survey conducted in December 2009.

The majority of survey respondents applauded reform's major goals: increasing access to needed health care services, promoting provider coordination and integration, supporting a stronger role for primary care and improving care for people with chronic conditions or complex needs, holding providers more accountable for results, and increasing health system efficiencies. They debated, however, whether current reform initiatives would bring these changes about, or whether congressional proposals will just create more problems down the road.

Rounding out the top half of the Top 10 list were: Fraud and abuse, Medicare, quality, and antitrust. These key issues are followed by health information, taxation, health plan regulation, medical staff, and labor and employment as front-burner concerns with which the health care system will be dealing in 2010. All survey respondents agreed that health care reform will be an issue with reverberations throughout all of the others.