As with any specialized year-end list it is only natural to speculate what all of the changes described in those recaps will mean for the year, or in this case, the decade ahead. Already, niche pundits are eagerly awaiting the arrival of high profile events in early 2010 which highlight everything from the new winter Fox TV broadcast schedule (American Idol‘s 9th season) to what’s next in gadgetry (CES 2010, Las Vegas) — and let’s not forget the biggest upcoming showcase of them all, at least among Mac Heads: the Mac World Expo in San Francisco.

But what about health policy?

Although Washington gets back to business next week, the hoopla surrounding the merging of the Senate and House versions of the reform bill is rather lukewarm — for innumerable reasons spelled out in this blog and all over the healthcare blogosphere in 2009. In spite of this historic bill pending Obama’s signature making it into law, the focus of health policy — for this year at least — will be on what will happen to healthcare delivery in spite of the language expressed in the final passage of the merged bill into law. Because of this, many health policy pundits, like myself, will be closely watching forces which will continue to define the heatlhcare marketplace — the economy within the economy which drives the institutions of Pharma, Insurance, and medical tech and devices in this country in influencing our health coverage. In turn, these two-ton pachyderms in the ongoing debate of health reform will spur interest in how the processes of healthcare systems, IT, patient-centered issues (the patient safety movement, consumer directed healthcare, patient healthcare disparities), and myriad other forces will set the trends for care delivery in the coming decade of the 2010s.

The groundwork has been laid. Now, we’re off and running.

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