What the Reform Law Fails to Reform

"We're constantly upgrading," he says. "We couldn't do what we do in value reengineering without having real-time feedback and this capability."

While calling the court's decision "an important step forward in healthcare reform," speaking of high healthcare costs and the high variability between regions on health spending, Steele says "the fundamentals are the fundamentals and we're in for a long-term attempt to address this."

Connelly suspects a legislative battle will focus on how to modify the health insurance exchange plan to loosen some of the regulations and to accelerate the issue of payment model reform. "Unless payments change, we can't afford costs of expanded coverage," he says.

This article appears in the August 2012 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.