Analysis & commentary. The foundation that health reform lays for improved payment, care coordination, and prevention

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act represents a major opportunity to achieve several key goals at once: improving disease prevention; reforming care delivery; and bending the cost curve of health spending while also realizing greater value for the dollars spent. Reform-based initiatives could produce major gains in a relatively short time. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services should develop an action plan detailing how the programs that the health reform law sets into motion throughout various agencies can work synergistically. It should also detail how best practices in finance and payment, in the organization and delivery of care, and in prevention can be expanded nationally.