100 Most Influential People in Healthcare - 2024

Becerra, in the top position at the agency since 2021, has overseen the department’s efforts to reduce costs, expand access to services, narrow disparities in outcomes and strengthen behavioral health. This year, under his leadership, the agency issued final rules aimed at expanding access to mental health services and outlining new consequences for providers that prevent authorized users from getting electronic health records data. It also published an aging-policy framework including goals such as creating geriatric emergency departments and surgery accreditations. Becerra also used his position to remind hospital and provider associations that emergency departments must provide treatment to stabilize patients in crisis — including, if applicable, abortion — and to urge major health insurance companies to more quickly get payments to providers in the wake of the cyberattack on UnitedHealth Group’s Change Healthcare.