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The Strategist in Brief: July 23, 2026
Listen to the episode on a streaming platform by clicking one of the links below:
This week’s Key Market Dive explores Amazon’s evolving strategy for One Medical and its referral partnerships with health systems.
While One Medical’s finances haven’t been publicly reported since the Amazon acquisition, health system partnerships accounted for 25% of the primary care chain’s revenue in 2022.
After a slow start in some markets, One Medical is now generating a growing volume of referrals for its health system partners.
One Medical is exploring deeper integrations with its health system partners, such as a new clinic located inside one of Montefiore Health System’s largest outpatient facilities.
The co-located clinic could facilitate joint and same-day appointments across specialties and might help Montefiore lock in its referral partnership with One Medical.
While One Medical has slowed expansion into new markets, Amazon is using the primary care business as a platform for a growing suite of pharmacy, AI, and telehealth offerings.
This week’s featured graphic showcases a recent survey by Medscape exploring which medical specialties are the happiest and most sustainable.
Doctors in specialties with predictable schedules (like dermatology) are happier than doctors in fields with unpredictable schedules and higher acuity (like emergency medicine).
To improve retention, health systems need to rethink how work is structured and how tools like AI can be used to reduce tedious administrative work.
HHS is delaying a proposed update to the HIPAA Security Rule that would tighten cybersecurity requirements.
The agency received nearly 5,000 comments—including many from health systems and provider advocates calling for the rule to be withdrawn, citing compliance burdens and unreasonable timelines.
The delay gives providers until July 2027 to prepare, but HHS is unlikely to abandon the rule altogether.
Health systems are caught between two competing priorities for HIPAA reform: making health information more shareable and accessible, and protecting it from cyberattacks.
The Strategist in Brief: July 9, 2026
Listen to the episode on a streaming platform by clicking one of the links below:
In its annual update to the OPPS payment rule, CMS is proposing a significant reimbursement cut for 340B-acquired drugs. Because the changes are budget neutral, for-profit health systems and hospitals with low 340B uptake could see a boost to their payments.
Unlike a similar effort in 2018, this proposed cut might survive legal challenges because the Trump administration recently undertook a survey of hospital drug acquisition costs.
The proposed rule also includes site-neutral reform for imaging services.
Sen. Bill Cassidy unveiled draft legislation that would reform the 340B drug discount program by letting drug manufacturers choose whether they want to offer providers upfront discounts or rebates. Providers can opt for a different payment mechanism if they voluntarily pass all 340B savings on to patients.
The draft is intended to solicit industry feedback and is not immediately headed through the committee markup process. The proposal’s chances to pass this year are somewhat limited with slim congressional majorities in a midterm election year.
Restrictions on eligible prescriptions, contract pharmacies, and out-of-pocket costs would reduce the savings that health systems realize under 340B, and new data reporting requirements could increase scrutiny by the media and policymakers.
Optum is negotiating with several New York health systems to sell orthopedic, general surgery, and urology practices attached to Optum Medical Care and Crystal Run Healthcare.
Optum is effectively unbundling Crystal Run, not retreating from the market entirely.
Optum is keeping control of the primary care panels, and UnitedHealthcare controls benefit design above them. Once these specialty practices leave that ecosystem, United might steer these volumes to lower-priced providers.
This week’s featured graphic comes from a new JAMA study showing that patient messages to providers have steadily continued to increase since the pandemic.
Female patients, patients between the ages of 40 to 64, and patients in affluent neighborhoods were the most likely to send messages to providers.
The trend is worth watching because inbox fatigue is a major driver of burnout and turnover among physicians.
The Strategist in Brief: June 25, 2026
Listen to the episode on a streaming platform by clicking one of the links below:
The House Appropriations Committee voted unanimously to bar CMS from funding WISeR, its AI-enabled prior authorization pilot for traditional Medicare. But the model is still running in all six pilot states, and an identical defunding effort died last year.
While the defunding vote is meaningful, it’s unclear if the funding bill that the provision is attached to will become law. Other legislative efforts to stop the program via the Congressional Review Act are more likely to succeed.
Eli Lilly has followed through on threats to cut off 340B discount pricing for certain hospitals that won’t submit their underlying claims data, but the list of impacted providers is not public.
The drugmaker is targeting large health systems first, possibly to maximize publicity while limiting the impact on smaller and rural providers that garner more sympathy from policymakers.
AHA proposed a compromise that would create a federally-run clearinghouse for 340B data, but the idea hasn’t gained traction with Eli Lilly or HRSA. The federal agency’s efforts are likely focused instead on standing back up its proposed rebate pilot program that was halted by a federal court ruling in late December.
This week’s edition takes a special look at Nebraska Medicine’s National Quarantine Unit, which was recently used to monitor Americans exposed to hantavirus in a widely publicized cruise ship outbreak.
While the unit has also been used to handle patients exposed to Ebola and COVID, it went for nearly a decade without patients when it was first established in 2005. The program maintained executive support by reframing itself as a business continuity and workforce protection effort, not pandemic preparedness.
Nebraska Medicine’s experts work with other systems to assess their capabilities and right-size their preparedness rather than replicate the unit.
A new HHS OIG report found that the three largest Medicare Advantage insurers—UnitedHealth, Humana, and CVS Health—deny post-acute prior authorization requests far more often than peers.
CMS declined to commit to the report’s recommendations and has shown little appetite for heavy-handed regulation. On the other hand, the report could provide valuable evidence for an ongoing class-action lawsuit against UnitedHealth and bolster the case to lawmakers for reform.
Priority Fog: The Gap Between Access Ambition and Execution
Listen to the episode on a streaming platform by clicking one of the links below:
THMA-Tegria research surveyed senior health system executives and interviewed Chief Financial Officers to understand how systems are defining, governing, and investing in access strategy. The headline finding: 82% now call access a strategic pillar, but most still can't solve basic appointment availability.
In this episode, Wes Adams, Managing Director of Industry Custom Services at THMA, walks us through where the alignment breaks down — from "priority fog" across the C-suite, to the fact that only 6% of systems involve finance in operationalizing access, to how tightening ROI timelines are reshaping where capital flows and where it doesn't.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
The Access-Driven Enterprise report from THMA and Tegria
THMA-Tegria webinar featuring executives from Emory, Sutter, and IU Health
Access as a Strategic Product case studies and webinar
Secret Shopping research webinars on urgent care and primary and specialty care access benchmarking
Videos
From Cost Center to Growth Engine: Transforming PT into a Strategic Front Door
Physical therapy has long been treated as a downstream service within the health system— a place patients land after the surgical decision is made. But in a market where well-capitalized competitors are intercepting orthopedic patients before they ever reach a health system, that framing is no longer financially neutral. It represents a measurable leak in volume, market share, and margin.
For executives navigating capital constraints and aggressive ambulatory competition, outpatient PT is an underleveraged strategic asset. When positioned as a consumer-facing access point — in retail corridors, community-dense locations, and high-traffic settings — PT captures patients earlier in the care journey, shapes clinical pathways before a competitor does, and drives referral flow back into high-margin orthopedic services. The build vs. partner calculus, the governance structures that make the model work, and the return on ambulatory access investment are the questions this session is designed to answer.
Where the Field Drew the Line: Findings from the 2026 Service Line Portfolio Strategy Survey
Health systems increasingly say they're rationalizing their service line portfolios to balance financial performance with access, quality, and mission, yet execution often tells a different story: financial signals quietly override stated priorities, service lines rarely get cut due to mission commitements, and ambulatory strategies frequently lag behind stated intent. The challenge isn't a lack of consensus on what matters—it's the gap between what leaders say drives their decisions and what actually does.
This webinar shares findings from the 2026 Strategy Catalyst Service Line Portfolio Strategy Survey, which sampled 40 Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Operating Officers, EVPs/VPs of Strategy and Operations, and service line executives across U.S. health systems with over $500M in annual net patient revenue. The survey investigated how health systems balance financial performance with access, quality, and mission as they optimize their service line portfolios.
Strategy Catalyst leaders are joined by executives from Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Baptist Health Care, who share how these tensions play out inside their own organizations. Together, they examine which service lines are sustained as core pillars for strategic or mission-critical reasons, the factors actually shaping portfolio decisions, and how service line strategy is evolving in practice.
Read the full report findings here
Member Speakers:
Hannah King Boyles, Advisor, Strategy Capacity-Building, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
Krystle Fernandez, Executive Director of Strategy, Planning & Performance, Baptist Health Care
Ashley Hodge, Executive Director, Strategic Outreach & Provider Development, Baptist Health Care
THMA Spring 2026 Chief Nursing Informatics Officer Forum Roundup
Read our debrief of The Health Management Academy's Spring 2026 Chief Nursing Informatics Officer Forum. In our debrief, we shared what these executives discussed with their peers, including what nursing informatic officers are working on right now.
THMA Spring 2026 Chief Marketing Officer & Consumer Collaborative Forum Roundup
Read our debrief of The Health Management Academy's Spring 2026 Chief Marketing Officer & Consumer Collaborative Forum. In our debrief, we shared what these executives discussed with their peers, including what marketing officers & consumer executives are working on right now.
