An urge to merge. Showing that wheeling and dealing is on their minds, health care general counsel in a recent survey cited mergers and acquisitions as their No. 1 priority in 2016. Some 94 percent of the GCs said that they are either involved or extremely involved in M&A activity.

Also weighing heavily on their minds is the risk of data breaches, with over two-thirds saying that they don't believe their emergency preparedness plan covers all risk exposure adequately. The top risk they cited was cybersecurity.

“M&A in health care is hot,” says Paul Mandell, founder and CEO of executive event coordinator Consero Group, which conducted the survey at a forum of health care GCs in Nashville in September. “And one of the key concerns when embarking on a merger or acquisition is identifying risks lurking in the target company, with the big ones being data security and HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] compliance.” Mandell calls it “alarming” that nearly 40 percent of GCs indicated that their systems were not prepared for cybersecurity incidents. “It's pretty troubling,” he says, “particularly since over one-third of those surveyed had a cyberbreach last year.”