With the year more than halfway done, we want to surface some of the most impactful resources and reports from the past several months. The list below covers a wide range of categories: our most-engaged resources from Strategy Catalyst, a handful of interesting reads from other THMA research teams that we’ve opened up for wider access, and a collection of third-party reports and blog posts that recently caught our attention.
Our favorite THMA research:
Published 8/7/2026 | 10-minute read
With recently passed Medicaid cuts expected to increase uncompensated care by $278 billion by 2036, health systems are under growing pressure to reduce avoidable costs while improving support for uninsured patients. This case study highlights how Ballad Health’s Appalachian Highlands Care Network (AHCN) treats uninsured patients as a value-based population, reducing uncompensated care while improving resource efficiency across the system.
Published 8/12/2026 | 10-minute read
An AI system renewing prescriptions without a doctor’s review sounds like a risky experiment, while an AI assistant answering pharmacy phone calls sounds like a safer one. Two recent case studies in Utah and Vermont challenge that conventional wisdom by showing that a “simple” AI model can be more dangerous than an autonomous model with proper guardrails.
Care Model Engineering at Advocate Health: A Product Lens on How Care Gets Built
Published 7/28/2026 | 32-minute podcast episode
Advocate Health’s CSO Shoeb Sitafalwalla joined us to discuss how a post-merger discovery process led his team to rethink what a health system's core product actually is, what it looks like to run care models through a product pipeline with stage gates and a 100,000-patient pilot minimum, and how the reusable architecture they've built took them from a 10-month first product to launching every three to four weeks.
Published 5/20/2026 | 38-page report
Our survey of 40 CSOs, COOs, and service line executives investigated how health systems balance financial performance with access, quality, and mission as they optimize their service line portfolios. Dive into the report to see which service lines are sustained as core pillars for strategic or mission-critical reasons, the factors shaping portfolio decisions, and how service line strategy is evolving in practice.
Other reads from around the web:
Tracking Implementation of the 2025 Reconciliation Law: Medicaid Work Requirements
By Kaiser Family Foundation | Updated 8/3/2026 | 10-minute read
The clock is running on Medicaid work requirements: the 2025 reconciliation law requires 44 states (including DC) to condition eligibility for ACA expansion adults on meeting work rules starting January 1, 2027. KFF's tracker follows state readiness: policy decisions, system builds, enrollment and renewal data.
What’s Inside a Massive Hospital?
By Andrew Tsang | Published 8/11/2026 | 13-minute read
Andrew Tsang opens up Mass General Brigham's FY2025 statement to show that a "hospital" is really several different businesses sharing one name—$22.8 billion in revenue spanning patient care, a health plan, research, and pharmacy, each with its own pricing and risk.
Certificate of Need: The Regulation Blocking Greater Access to Higher-Quality and Lower-Cost Care
By Cato Institute | Published 8/11/2026 | 15-minute read
Reviewing 128 studies and 458 statistical tests, the libertarian-leaning researchers at the Cato Institute conclude that CON laws raise costs, restrict access, and worsen quality—hitting rural and underserved populations hardest. Several states including South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee are enacting reforms.
The high-cost claim and claimant whitepaper: Insights to strengthen your benefit strategy
By Anthem Health | Published August 2026 | 28-page report
A small cluster of catastrophic claimants drives outsized plan spend. Anthem's whitepaper maps where the risk concentrates—cancer, circulatory, and musculoskeletal conditions—and the benefit-design levers self-funded employers are pulling in response.
The $48B Payor Nobody Contracts With
By Blake Madden, Hospitalogy | Published 7/27/2026 | 10-minute read
Patients are the fastest-growing payor and the worst-yielding one. Systems spend 25–30 cents to collect each patient dollar versus 4–5 cents for a commercial dollar and collect just 30–50% of what patients owe against 95–97% from insurers. Rising deductibles and Medicaid cuts are adding to the strain.