Listen to our debrief of The Health Management Academy's Spring 2026 Chief Revenue Cycle Officer (CRCO) Forum. In our debrief, we shared what these executives discussed with their peers, including what CRCOs are working on right now.
Below are key takeaways for what is top of mind for CRCOs and what you need to know going into your next conversation with them:
The Workforce Transformation Underneath AI Is Harder — and More Important — Than the Technology. The limiting factor in AI adoption is the workforce, not the technology — the shift from transactional processing to analytical oversight is happening faster than the talent pipeline can support. Organizations treating change management as a continuous priority, rather than a go-live checklist, are seeing meaningfully higher adoption and are better positioned to realize AI's deflationary potential.
Revenue Cycle Must Be a Co-Builder of Strategy — Not a Late-Stage Reviewer. Leading health systems are embedding revenue cycle into capital planning, service line design, and partnership decisions from the outset — because go-live failures increasingly stem from treating novel situations as if existing workflows will simply transfer. As MA exits, ICHRA proliferation, and direct-to-employer arrangements expand the scope of revenue cycle's responsibilities, the cost of being brought in late is growing.
Payer Relations (and Patient Affordability as a Result) Remain the Defining Operational Challenge — and the Available Levers Are Narrow. Payer strategy remains the most urgent and unresolved challenge, with litigation, employer engagement, and self-service payment models offering only partial relief against structural conditions that continue to worsen. Health systems are approaching an inflection point: find a path toward genuine payer collaboration, or build the bypass routes that reduce dependence on the traditional relationship altogether.
The Revenue Base Is Shifting Faster than Organizations Can Adapt. Medicare Advantage exits, employer market pivots, and the long-term trajectory toward joint ventures and risk-bearing models are collectively reshaping the revenue base that revenue cycle has been optimized to manage. The organizations getting ahead of this are those treating revenue cycle not as a billing operation for today's payer mix, but as a strategic capability designed around where revenue is going.