Women in some parts of the United States are dying younger than they did a generation ago.

As health care administrators around the country prepare to implement the Affordable Care Act, educators are also tasked with preparing the next generation of managers — for the unknown.

No one knows yet just how health care reform is going to change the daily routine for practitioners and administrators, but all agree that business decisions, from purchasing supplies to the cost of follow-up care, are going to look different.

If current trends continue, solo medical practitioners could go the way of the dinosaurs.

Under the federal Affordable Care Act, all but a small number of Americans soon will be required to have health insurance. But having insurance is one thing; getting the medical care it is intended to cover may be entirely another.

In a nation full of hot-button issues, few are as torrid as federal health care reform. More than a year and a half since its passage, the law — officially dubbed the Affordable Care Act but derisively called “Obamacare” by its critics — is still being fought in the courts, Congress and statehouses across the country. But for all the political and legal wrangling, the law is marching forward.

When Dr. Gerald Rogan’s mother was hospitalized after contracting an infection at an assisted-living facility, he learned firsthand that family advocacy is key.

Until about a year ago, 86-year-old Clair was living in her own home on the East Coast with her husband of 60 years. When her husband died suddenly, her daughter quickly moved Clair into a senior living complex in Sacramento to be near family.

In 2002 Michael Walter was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, but to his wife, Beth, the diagnosis just didn’t seem to fit the symptoms. So she Googled “ALS brain-related disease” — frontotemporal degeneration popped up.

Consider the annual physical and why both doctors and America’s work force find them frustrating: The worker has to carve out time to take all the exams and tests, often in different locations and on different days, and doctors lament the lack of time to discuss the results with patients.

Doctors in the Capital Region aren’t just checking your temperature and blood pressure when you come in for a checkup these days; in growing numbers, they’re also checking your mood.