Introduction

Extract

The landscape for the healthcare system in the United States is ever-changing. While everyone acknowledges that the system is broken and does not meet the needs of the American citizens, there is little agreement, and actually significant disagreement on how to “fix the system.” While the clinical laboratory and its approximately 300,000 professionals do not drive the change, they are significantly impacted by all of the changes. Clinical laboratory professionals do have an opportunity to enable the healthcare system and to demonstrate their value proposition at this important time.

This continuing education series concentrates on three related areas in the legislative and regulatory arena. Each article provides basic background related to each topic and attempts to address how the laboratory is impacted and what role(s) it has the opportunity to play in this dynamic time.

The first article is an introduction to healthcare reform, entitled Healthcare Reform 101. While it does not go into detail on the content of the more than 2700 pages of legislation and over 20,000 pages of regulations, it provides the basic context in which healthcare reform (Affordable Care Act or Obamacare) was passed in March 2010 and summarizes the reasons behind the need for reform and the intended goals of the legislation.

While the future of health care reform is up for debate, it is likely that the Affordable Care Act will continue to provide the outline for much-needed change going forward. It is also quite likely there will be changes in some of the…

ABBREVIATIONS: ACA – Affordable Care Act; ASCLS – American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science; ACO – Accountable Care Organization; DRG – Diagnosis Related Group