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Season 1 | Episode 57 - Oct 1, 2026

The Strategist in Brief: October 1, 2026

Episode Description

Related Topics:
Artificial IntelligenceGrowthCare DeliveryPayer Strategy
Relevant Roles:
Chief Strategy Officers

Listen to the episode on a streaming platform by clicking one of the links below:

  • This week’s Key Market Dive looks at the landscape for musculoskeletal care, one of the largest service lines facing one of the most rapid transitions to outpatient settings.

    • Multiple forces are reshaping the market: digital MSK platforms and benefit networks capture and steer patients upstream, ASCs siphon off profitable routine procedures midstream, and PE-backed platforms consolidate the full orthopedic value chain.

    • Digital MSK leaders Hinge Health and Sword Health are expanding their platforms into GI care and behavioral health, leveraging their existing relationships with employers and health plans.

  • Our featured graphic showcases data from The Health Management Academy’s 2026 AI Use Case Benchmarking Survey Report, which surveyed 52 health systems.

    • Health systems that have deployed more than a dozen AI use cases report a positive ROI in most cases where ROI can be measured, suggesting that returns hold up even as AI portfolios grow.

  • Ascension is selling its ownership stake in an Arizona-based Medicaid plan called Mercy Care to Aetna for an undisclosed amount.

    • Mercy Care has massive revenues and dual-eligible enrollees, but also has a margin of less than one percent. Aetna has enough scale to take on that financial risk in an uncertain policy environment.

  • Counsel Health will join CMS's ACCESS Model with Oura as its preferred wearable partner, offering no-cost chronic care to eligible Medicare beneficiaries starting in early 2027.

    • ACCESS's low rates, which many digital health companies passed on, work for Counsel because its AI-first care model is cheap to run and Oura's 5 million paid members give it low-cost patient acquisition.

Headshot of a smiling woman with long wavy dark hair, wearing a green sweater, standing outdoors in front of a brick building.

About Our Host

Anika Rasheed

Anika is a Senior Analyst on the Strategy Catalyst team.

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  • We asked a half dozen health system strategy leaders how their teams use GenAI for strategic planning work.

    • Information gathering is a top use case: some strategy teams use AI to size up markets faster, build competitor and hospital profiles, and reach a point of view on acquisition targets.

    • Several teams use AI to create finished deliverables, but verification and cleanup work can be time intensive.

    • Some teams are forced to stick with organizationally sanctioned AI tools that are clunkier than popular consumer tools like ChatGPT and Claude, which slows adoption.

  • At a recent roundtable discussion hosted by Strategy Catalyst, health system strategy leaders discussed different approaches to physician alignment and growth.

    • Many health systems employ multiple alignment strategies at the same time. The right model can vary by market or service line.

    • Health systems are facing pressure from rising costs for hospital-based specialties and competition from private equity.

  • This week’s featured graphic looks at average CEO tenures across different industries, based on data from Crist Kolder Associates. Healthcare is middle-of-the-pack, with an average tenure of 6.4 years.

    • A separate survey of health system CEOs specifically, by the consultancy SullivanCotter, found an average tenure of just over seven years.

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The Strategist in Brief: September 3, 2026

Listen to the episode on a streaming platform by clicking one of the links below:

  • Epic recently unveiled Ergo Visit, a platform that combines the company’s AI tools into a single workflow that assists clinicians before, during, and after an outpatient visit.

    • The announcement caught our attention because the ongoing migration of care to outpatient settings has turned the office visit into a key battleground where systems compete for access, patient loyalty, and increasingly scarce physician time.

    • To learn more, we interviewed Falyn Curtis, VP of Clinical Systems at Ochsner Health, the first system to put the tool into clinical use.

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      • Ochsner leans on layered AI governance including an AI Center of Excellence, an AI steering committee, and frontline clinicians to vet new tools as AI increasingly shapes clinical decisions.

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