Insights

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• At this year’s JPM, health system presentations were focused on disciplined execution, strategic simplification, and missions grounded in financial realities.

  • New technologies are accelerating the shift towards more proactive, longitudinal care models.

  • Health systems are streamlining patient journeys, internal processes, and vendor ecosystems. Portfolio rationalization is proving essential for investor confidence.

  • Technology leaders are prioritizing core tech infrastructure over flashy novelties and point solutions.

• Congressional leaders have attached a bipartisan package of healthcare reforms to this week’s “must pass” government funding legislation. An impasse over immigration enforcement funding could delay passage.

  • The package includes new limits on PBM practices, extensions of key programs like Hospital-at-Home and telehealth flexibilities, and a new billing requirement for off-campus HOPDs.

  • Overall, the provisions are mostly positive for health systems. A larger, more comprehensive site neutral payment reform is unlikely this year, but policymakers are still chipping away at the issue.

• At a recent Strategy Catalyst webinar, health system leaders debated three provocative claims about payviders, PE, and distributors.

  • Most attendees agreed that payviders will exert leverage through benefit design and referral control rather than outright ownership. However, payers might lack the network density to execute this strategy in some markets.

  • The vast majority agreed that health systems don’t necessarily need to outbid PE for physician assets if they can just outlast them instead.

  • The virtual room was split on the competitive threat posed by distributors like Cencora, McKesson, and Cardinal Health.

• Zarminali Pediatrics raised $110M to expand its multispecialty platform to several new markets, including Chicago, Milwaukee and Dallas.

  • Health systems might be able to partner with Zarminali in an “embrace-and-extend” model that still refers acute and complex cases to the hospital setting. Other systems might see the firm a new competitor for care volumes, workforce talent, and patient relationships.

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Women in midlife are the highest healthcare spenders on the managed care side and women use healthcare more than men, even when you take obstetrics out. In this episode of The Strategy Catalyst Dispatch, Kathleen McHugh, AVP of Corporate Strategy, and Jennifer Todd, VP of the Women's Service Line at Memorial Hermann walk us through the business case for investing in women's health, why they partnered with digital health start-up MIDI Health to address the gap in menopause care rather than build in-house, and the outcomes they've seen two years in, including record employee benefit adoption and a steady flow of referrals back to Memorial Hermann for care.

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In this episode of The Strategy Catalyst Dispatch, we explore a commonly cited theme in strategic plans that rarely gets commensurate investment: culture transformation.

Wellstar Health System's Chief Strategy Officer Matt Terry joined us to talk about how his system has positioned culture as a strategic pillar to make it visible, measurable, and fundable alongside other enterprise priorities.

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CFOs and COOs are navigating one of the most turbulent years in recent memory since 2020. From historic Medicaid cuts to escalating battles with payers, health system leaders are bracing for financial, political, and reputational pressures that demand new strategies. In this episode of The Strategy Catalyst Dispatch, we unpack the key themes from The Health Management Academy's 2025 CFO and COO forums:

• The fallout of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” and what comes next on site neutrality, 340B, and nonprofit status.

• Why payer relations have become an outright arms race and how AI is reshaping denials management.

• Workforce challenges: rising labor costs, unionization, and the push to build new pipelines.

• Where AI and automation are showing real ROI, from ambient listening to autonomous coding.

Join Kathy Davies, Director of Clinical Documentation Integrity (CDI) at OSF HealthCare, and Priti Shah, SVP of Product Management at Waystar, to uncover how OSF strategically transformed their CDI program. This session demonstrates how purposeful leadership, cross-functional collaboration, and AI-powered innovation deliver meaningful improvements in documentation quality, coding accuracy, and financial performance. They reveal practical approaches you can use now to modernize workflows, eliminate departmental silos, and create sustainable change to improve patient outcomes and organizational value.

Sustaining health impact initiatives amid financial constraints requires demonstrating clear value propositions that support health system margins, yet the challenge of building scalable models remains. This roundtable explores innovative approaches that drive health system sustainability, including building FQHC partnerships and comprehensive care networks that close the gap on rural health access & outcomes.

Entering 2026, established disruptors are evolving their playbook—shifting control upstream through referral pathways, benefit design, drug channels, and capital reallocation. While payviders, private equity, and distributors remain deeply embedded in the healthcare ecosystem, their strategies vary across service lines, creating differentiated risks and decision points for health systems.

In this Strategy Catalyst webinar, health system strategy leaders shared their interpretations of these shifts. Through a series of deliberately provocative claims, the discussion surfaced where leaders see emerging threats, where views diverge, and where service-line strategy may require different choices in 2026. The session examined how disruptor impact varies by service line and introduces practical frameworks to help leaders determine when to partner, compete, acquire—or deliberately stand down.

In this session, we’ll bring together insights from our Fall 2025 CSO Forums —highlighting what healthcare executives discussed during their in-person gatherings with peers. We’ll also share our perspective on the cross-cutting themes and their implications for industry organizations that partner with leading health systems.