In January 2021, Manatt Health described the ten health care imperatives essential for improving our health care system and advancing health equity in the ’20s. Now two years into the decade, we are, as one health care executive succinctly put it, “living our life in surges.”

Manatt Health’s new report, “Ten Health Care Imperatives for the 2020s: Navigating Through the Surges,” recognizes the extraordinary challenge of simultaneously improving the health care system and navigating the exigencies of the pandemic. The past year brought significant challenges to realizing progress; we witnessed the erosion of trust in science and public health, an epidemic of behavioral health disorders exacerbated by social isolation, persistent and widening disparities in health care access and quality of care, and chronic health care workforce shortages and stresses.

In the new report, we acknowledge the progress we made in 2021 in spite of these enormous challenges, and address the health care imperatives that we believe are critical for improving our health care system and advancing health equity throughout the rest of the decade.

The imperatives examined in the report include:

1.  Ensuring access to coverage and care
2.  Achieving health equity through collective and sustained actions
3.  Stabilizing the safety net and rebuilding public health capacity
4.  Addressing social drivers to improve health for all Americans
5.  Helping our children reach their full potential
6.  Innovating long-term financing and care models to promote living longer, healthier lives with dignity
7.  Accelerating digital health
8.  Advancing academic medicine
9.  Delivering breakthrough treatments affordably
10.  Securing health data and putting it to work

To read the full report, click here.