About This Collection

A wide range of legal questions are considered as Aligning Forces for Quality Alliances pursue innovative ways to improve the quality of care provided in their communities. From state fair process laws to federal antitrust regulations, AF4Q Alliances must work within the parameters of the law as well as understand how it can enhance their work. This section provides up-to-date analyses on current health care legal issues that potentially affect the work of AF4Q Alliances

Key Resources:

What You Need to Know:

The Legal Barriers Project provides ongoing support to AF4Q communities by analyzing specific legal issues relevant to the communities, conducting cross-site technical assistance, and providing insight into the major legal themes surrounding quality/equality reform. Legal Barriers generates issue briefs on topics that include quality data collection by race, ethnicity, and language, health information technology, patient privacy, mechanisms for realigning provider payments to incentivize quality, public reporting of performance measures, and the limits of state and regional policymaking. By focusing on these broad policy issues in addition to the tailored needs of the individual Aligning Forces communities, Legal Barriers will help translate the lessons learned from Aligning Forces into generalizable knowledge for a national audience.

 

Health Care Legal Issues


Antitrust laws prohibit practices that interfere with free competition, such as price-fixing and unreasonable restraint on trade. In some cases, activities designed to promote value-based purcha...
 
This webinar held on May 4, 2009 addressed the privacy provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the recent economic stimulus legislation.
 
Sara Rosenbaum, who leads the Legal Barriers project at GWU, discussed the recent state legislation that may impede physician rating by health plans and legal precedents that require fair proces...
 
Published: Mar 2011
Author: Lara Cartwright-Smith, J.D., M.P.H. Sara Rosenbaum, J.D. Devi Mehta, J.D., M.P.H. Cand.
Volume 3, Issue 1 of LegalNotes is on disparities reduction and minority health improvement initiatives under the ACA, in addition to the issuance of health insurance.
 
This issue of Legal Notes briefly reviews the provisions of the final CMS rule defining meaningful user for the Medicaid EHR incentive program compared to the proposed rule.
 
Published: Jan 2010
Author: AF4Q
LegalNotes is a regular online Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) publication that provides readers with short, readable summaries of developments in the law that collectively shape the broader ...
 
LegalNotes is a regular online Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) publication that provides readers with short, readable summaries of developments in the law that collectively shape the broader ...
 
Published: Mar 2009
Author: AF4Q National Program Office
This inaugural issue of LegalNotes examines recent guidelines released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which add greater clarity regarding the extent to which the Health ...
 
Published: 2009
Author: GWU Legal Barriers
LegalNotes is an online bimonthly Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) publication that provides readers with summaries of developments in the law that may be of interest to AF4Q alliances and the...
 
Published: Mar 2010
Author: Jane Hyatt Thorpe, Erica Pereira, and Sara Rosenbaum, The George Washington University
A brief from the George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services examines federal law and pending health reform legislation to find the answers. Authors Jane Hyatt Thorpe...