Becker’s asked C-suite executives from hospitals, health systems, academic medical centers and universities across the U.S. to share the healthcare trends that deserve more attention.
The 117 executives featured in this article are all speaking at the Becker’s Healthcare 16th Annual Meeting, from April 13 – 16, 2026 at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.
To learn more about this event, click here.
If you would like to join as a speaker or a reviewer, contact Mariah Muhammad at mmuhammad@beckershealthcare.com or agendateam@beckershealthcare.com.
For more information on sponsorship opportunities or vendor access-only badges, contact Jessica Cole at jcole@beckershealthcare.com.
As part of an ongoing series, Becker’s is talking to healthcare leaders who will speak at our conference. The following are answers from our speakers at the event.
Question: What are the underappreciated trends in healthcare today that deserve more attention?
John D. Couris. President and CEO of Tampa (Fla.) General Hospital: The trends I think we need to focus on for 2026 are related to the projected 15% increase in healthcare costs for the consumer of healthcare. They are being driven in my opinion by the following:
1) We need to keep an eye on general inflation, this will contribute to increases in cost, we will need to offset some or all of the increases.
2) Labor costs will continue to slowly rise, they are being stubborn and not leveling out, they continue to increase.
3) Drug and treatment costs will continue to increase. Need to closely watch new therapies like cell and gene therapy, which are saving lives but incredibly expensive and will over time drive up. Completely worth the investment.
4) Provider consolidation and hospital pricing will continue to rise in certain areas of the country. As providers become bigger, contract negotiations with private payers will become more intense.
5) We will continue to see an increased demand for medical services with the aging population.
6) Policy and subsidy changes will impact over all costs. There will be improvements and there will also be challenges presented to the industry. We need to keep an eye on this work and balance the good with the challenges. We can’t overreact or over-correct. We need to work through the obstacles thoughtfully. With any great change comes an abundance of opportunity.
Saurabh Tripathi. Executive Vice President and CFO of Ascension (St. Louis): It is critical for our industry to invest in ways to provide excellent clinical care to our patients in the right place, at the right time. This is not only just cost-effective – it’s also what our patients want. We are focused on providing accessible care that is also affordable and high-quality. That is why Ascension is growing horizontally and focusing on ambulatory care — expanding access to ASCs, retail clinics, outpatient rehab, telehealth, pharmacy services.
Peter J. Pronovost, MD, PhD. Chief Quality and Clinical Transformation Officer and the Veale Distinguished Chair in Leadership and Clinical Transformation, University Hospitals (Cleveland): One of the most underappreciated trends in healthcare is that success is not an either/or choice between fee-for-service and value-based care — you can win in both models. The organizations that thrive are those that resist false tradeoffs and instead build strategies that allow them to capture the strengths of each.
Another overlooked trend is the power of unleashing every employee to improve value. When leaders see all employees as inherently capable and give them genuine opportunities to contribute, innovation accelerates. Problems are solved faster, solutions are more practical, and costs decline — because the people closest to the work are empowered to shape it.
Finally, a major but often undervalued opportunity lies in rethinking labor costs through disciplined simplification. That means systematically asking: what can we stop doing altogether, what can be automated, what tasks can be outsourced or shifted to lower-cost roles — or even robots — and, critically, what should remain sacred because it’s core to the human value of the role?
This kind of thoughtful redesign not only reduces costs but also elevates the meaning and purpose of work. Together, these trends point to a future where healthcare organizations succeed by embracing dual models of payment, fully tapping into the potential of their people, and intentionally redesigning work.
Michelle Stansbury. Associate Chief Innovation Officer and Vice President of IT Applications at Houston Methodist: One area many organizations might be overlooking as they move forward with digital innovation is the foundational infrastructure needed to support these new technologies. At Houston Methodist, we’ve long been committed to advancing innovation, and over the past year, we’ve made significant investments in upgrading the infrastructure at several of our facilities. These upgrades are essential to supporting our growing digital initiatives such as virtual care, AI integration and other technologies within our patient care units.
As many of these technologies play a critical role in delivering clinical care, it’s crucial to think about infrastructure in a strategic way, particularly the redundancies required to ensure maximum uptime. The reliability and stability of the underlying systems are just as important as the digital innovations themselves, as the disruption in service can have serious implications for patient care. Investing in robust infrastructure not only supports the technologies we are implementing today but also helps us to adapt and scale as future innovations emerge.
Kevin D. Junkins, MD. Chief Medical Officer of Behavioral Health at Community Care of West Virginia (Buckhannon): A growing trend in healthcare is integration of behavioral health services, but I find that innovation in payment models and operations is often underdiscussed. Integrated behavioral health services such as solution focused brief therapy, warm handoffs to therapists, and care coordination not only improves patient compliance and experience but also improves outcomes and provides access to behavioral healthcare, all while reserving traditional behavioral healthcare providers for more severe or complex cases. These types of integration into other specialties, especially primary care, are touted by federal and state healthcare agencies as an option to increase timely access to behavioral healthcare. While it is a promising solution with much discussion about implementation and practice, traditional payment models are not keeping pace, which means that healthcare systems and providers are struggling to balance innovative models to increase access to behavioral health services with insurance and operations related barriers, such as additional copays for behavioral health services delivered in the clinic, needs for prior authorization for behavioral health services, and lack of clinic infrastructure to facilitate the additional services in the primary care setting. We need additional dialogue and compromise to design financially sustainable models of behavioral health integration to meet the growing demand from patients and federal and state agencies.
Nneka O. Sederstrom, PhD. Chief Health Equity Officer of Hennepin Healthcare (Minneapolis): One of the most underappreciated trends in healthcare today is the silent epidemic of access fatigue; patients and communities are simply exhausted from trying to navigate a system that was not designed for them. We focus so much on new technology and shiny innovation, but we are missing the fact that people are opting out of care because of the complexity, the mistrust, systemic racism, and the emotional labor it takes just to get seen. The future of healthcare must shift from asking patients to adapt to the system, to building systems that adapt to patients culturally, financially, and emotionally. If we don’t fix that, all the innovation in the world won’t matter.
Joy N. White, DNP, MBA, RN. Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer of Legacy Health Good Samaritan Medical Center (Portland, Ore.): One trend that deserves more attention is how health equity efforts intersect with everyday care delivery. It’s not only about access — it’s about ensuring patients feel safe, seen, and supported across cultural and socioeconomic lines. Leaders who weave equity and inclusion into staffing, technology adoption, and patient engagement are quietly reshaping the future of healthcare in profound ways. Prioritizing equity as operational work — not a side project — improves outcomes, trust, and retention.
Paula Ferrada, MD. Chair Department of Surgery Inova Fairfax Medical Campus; Division and System Chief, Trauma and Acute Care Surgery at Inova Healthcare System (Fairfax, Va.): One of the most underappreciated trends in healthcare today is the growing recognition of team-based care. Too often, the focus is on individual achievement, but what truly transforms patient outcomes is the collaboration of multidisciplinary teams — nurses, surgeons, therapists, social workers, and countless others working together. This quiet but powerful shift deserves more attention because it is changing the very culture of medicine from one of silos to one of shared purpose.
Another overlooked trend is the emphasis on mental health and well-being for both patients and providers. For decades, healthcare systems have been built around physical care, while mental health has remained in the shadows. Now, the increasing integration of mental health into primary and specialty care is saving lives, reducing stigma, and creating more holistic healing. It is not flashy, but it is profoundly transformative.
A third underappreciated trend is the integration of technology in equitable ways — using artificial intelligence, telemedicine, and digital platforms not just for efficiency, but to expand access for rural communities, vulnerable populations, and patients who historically have been left behind. This deserves more attention because it is quietly democratizing healthcare and rewriting who gets care, when, and how.
Finally, I believe a culture of continuous improvement and humility is gaining ground. Leaders and teams are moving away from “shame and blame” models and toward systems that emphasize safety, trust, and learning. It may not make headlines, but this cultural change will define the future of healthcare.
These trends may not always capture attention, but they are building the foundation for a more compassionate, innovative, and equitable healthcare system — one that truly serves every patient.
Amaka Eneanya, MD. Former Chief Transformation Officer: We are becoming less appreciative of the importance of executive leadership quality. Too often, executives receive a vast amount of incentive compensation based on financial performance rather than qualitative reviews of their leadership style and engagement. For instance, are they able to make decisions in a timely manner, hold their leaders accountable or encourage strong collaboration across the enterprise? These leadership qualities correlate strongly with employee engagement and burnout metrics – additional values that are increasingly underappreciated in healthcare.
David Allen, DNP, RN, CCNS-BC, CCRN. Division Chief Nursing Officer of Adult Services at OU Health (Oklahoma City): Integrated behavioral health. Mental and behavioral health are now recognised as essential to physical health. The U.S. faces a shortage of behavioral health providers while demand rises, leaving many without timely care. Treating conditions like depression and anxiety alongside chronic diseases can improve treatment results and well-being through integrated care models.
Deborah Visconi. President and CEO of Bergen New Bridge Medical Center (Paramus, N.J.): One of the most underappreciated trends in healthcare today is the widening gap between mission and margin for safety-net and community hospitals. We are seeing increasing demand for behavioral health, addiction treatment, and complex chronic care at the very moment that reimbursement and policy changes are straining resources. This isn’t just a financial challenge — it’s a societal one — and it deserves far more attention.
Another underrecognized trend is the critical role of digital transformation in health equity. The move to platforms like Epic isn’t only about technology; it’s about creating seamless care, reducing disparities, and giving patients across all socioeconomic levels access to the same high-quality experience as those in more resourced systems.
Finally, emergency departments are evolving into the true front door of healthcare, especially in safety-net settings. They’re no longer just sites for acute care; they’ve become hubs for behavioral health intervention, primary care navigation, and community connection. Recognizing and investing in that evolution is essential for the future of care delivery.
These are areas that may not always capture headlines, but they are where the future of healthcare — and the health of our communities — will be decided.
Ryan Vervack. Chief Technology Officer of University of Maryland Medical System (Baltimore): Clinician experience is often overlooked, but it directly shapes the quality of patient care. When clinicians are burdened by clunky systems, duplicate data entry, or endless alerts, that frustration risks spilling over into the patient encounter. Conversely, tools that reduce friction – like ambient documentation, better EHR integration, or workflow automation – free clinicians to focus on empathy and connection. Supporting clinicians also means giving them reliable, secure systems they can trust, so they’re not distracted by downtime or workarounds. At the end of the day, improving the clinician’s experience is one of the fastest and most sustainable ways to improve the patient’s.
Blake Evans. System Vice President of Revenue Cycle at Rush University Medical Center (Chicago): One underappreciated trend in healthcare today is the shifting workforce dynamic. Much of the conversation rightfully focuses on technology, AI, and financial pressures, but less attention is given to the generational changes shaping the future of healthcare.
Younger generations are entering the workforce with different expectations and values than previous generations. Many are less drawn to traditional “normal careers” in healthcare administration or clinical practice, instead seeking roles that align with flexibility, innovation, and purpose-driven work. This creates both a challenge and an opportunity. If organizations continue to rely on outdated workforce models, they risk talent shortages and disengagement. But if we lean into this generational shift, we can reimagine career pathways, rethink how we train and retain talent, and design work environments that reflect what the next generation is seeking. This is not just an HR issue, it’s a strategic imperative. The healthcare organizations that succeed will be the ones that can both adapt to these workforce trends and simultaneously invest in technology, culture, and leadership development.
John Voight, MSN, RN, NEA-BC. Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer of Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Medical Center (Shenandoah, Texas): Workplace violence against nurses remains severely underappreciated as a driver of nursing burnout and workforce attrition, with healthcare organizations treating it as isolated incidents rather than recognizing its systematic impact on nurse wellbeing and retention. Beyond immediate physical injuries, workplace violence creates lasting psychological trauma that compounds existing burnout by adding hypervigilance, defensive practice patterns, and moral distress when nurses can’t provide compassionate care while protecting themselves. These incidents drive experienced nurses away from bedside care or out of nursing entirely, yet organizations rarely track workplace violence as a root cause of turnover, missing the connection between nurse safety and workforce stability. The result is a hidden crisis where violence accelerates burnout and depletes the nursing workforce just when healthcare systems need experienced nurses most.
Trampas Hutches. Regional President of MaineHealth (Portland) Mountain Region: One of the most underappreciated trends in healthcare is the profound demographic shift already reshaping care delivery and financial performance. Maine and New Hampshire are now the two oldest states in the nation—but the rest of the country isn’t far behind, and similar pressures will hit every market within the next decade. As the Baby Boomer population reaches and passes its peak, every fractional shift in payer mix has outsized implications on margins. Workforce participation is declining in parallel, accelerating labor shortages just as care complexity rises. Post- Baby Boomer care design must look fundamentally different—more tech-enabled, community-integrated, and value-driven—to be sustainable. Leaders need to pull new levers: automation, leaner throughput, upstream chronic care models, and culturally aligned innovation that patients and staff actually adopt. This isn’t about doing what we’ve always done more efficiently—it’s about redesigning the entire playbook.
Sharon Klarman, BSN. Associate Vice President of Solid Organ Transplantation and VAD at Tufts Medical Center (Boston): Amid the industry’s focus on innovation and disruption, one of the most underappreciated forces reshaping healthcare is the shift toward comprehensive operational integration. Breakthrough therapies, digital tools, and payment reform are vital advances, but their impact is often constrained by fragmented infrastructure and siloed execution. The most forward-thinking organizations are investing just as intentionally in the foundational architecture of their systems: shared data platforms, cross-functional governance, and aligned workforce and operating models.
This integration work is less visible than the latest technology, but it is what transforms isolated progress into sustainable, systemwide performance. It is what allows new therapies to reach more patients, new models of care to scale, and care teams to perform at their highest potential. Organizations that make integration a deliberate strategic focus will be better positioned to deliver meaningful and lasting improvements in care.
Ben Goodstein. Vice President and Chief Ambulatory Officer of Dayton Children’s Hospital (Ohio); President at Dayton Children’s Specialty Physicians Inc.: Underappreciated Trends in Pediatric Healthcare
Across the U.S., children’s health is shaped by forces that often go unnoticed in national debates but have profound implications for access, outcomes, and sustainability. Three themes stand out as especially urgent:
1. Medicaid’s Central Role in Pediatrics
Medicaid and CHIP insure nearly half of U.S. children, yet program churn and administrative complexity disrupt continuity of care. Too often, children lose coverage during eligibility redeterminations, which delays preventive visits, vaccinations, and specialty referrals. Unlike Medicare, pediatric hospitals operate in a Medicaid-first world, where state-by-state policies drive stability and sustainability.
2. Behavioral Health: Underfunded and Overloaded
Pediatric behavioral health demand has skyrocketed, but Medicaid reimbursement rates for mental health services remain too low to sustain provider networks. This underpayment contributes to “ghost networks,” long waits, and the national crisis of children boarding in EDs for days or weeks due to a lack of psychiatric placement. Children’s hospitals are filling gaps with med-psych bridge units and integrated primary care models, but without payment reform, these solutions remain fragile.
3. The Subspecialty Access Cliff
Over the next five years, children will face worsening shortages in pediatric subspecialties such as neurology, developmental-behavioral pediatrics, and gastroenterology. The pipeline is constrained by lower lifetime earnings compared to adult specialties, driven by a Medicaid-heavy payer mix and undervaluation of complex cognitive care. Without urgent investment, families will wait longer, travel farther, and face delayed diagnoses for conditions that demand early intervention.
David Ohm. Chief Strategic Development Officer of MultiCare Health System (Tacoma, Wash.): I believe certain areas of healthcare are given less attention than they deserve, despite their current and future relevance. Personalized preventive care is crucial to shift from reactive to proactive treatments. Genomic devices can identify predispositions to diseases like cancer, while wearable devices monitor health metrics to flag early warning signs. AI algorithms can analyze patient data to recommend personalized lifestyle and treatment plans, reducing chronic disease and lowering long-term healthcare costs. Additionally, innovations for the aging population, such as smart home systems, robotic assistants, and AI-driven health alerts, promote independence, reduce caregiver burden, and address the challenges of aging.
Deepti Pandita, MD. Vice President of Clinical Informatics and Chief Medical Information Officer at UCI Health (Orange, Calif.): Success with implementing AI at scale in healthcare depends not just on technical readiness but on equipping clinicians to critically engage with AI outputs, understand limitations, and co-create safe, effective workflows. CMIOs must lead this cultural shift with governance, training, and trust-building.
Eric Cioe-Peña, MD. Vice President of Global Health, Center for Global Health at Northwell Health (New Hyde Park, N.Y.): One underappreciated trend in healthcare today is the shift from treating disease downstream to investing upstream in prevention, safety, and social determinants of health. Too often, our systems reward high-acuity interventions but undervalue efforts like violence prevention, mental health access, and community-based care models that can dramatically reduce downstream burden. Another trend that deserves more attention is the role of technology not just in precision medicine, but in closing equity gaps globally: using telehealth, AI, and data to reach underserved populations. If we fail to recognize and invest in these areas, we risk widening disparities instead of closing them.
Caroline Deskin. Associate Chief Clinical Operations Officer of Therapy Services at UI Health (Chicago): Underappreciated trends often live where operations, workforce, and community overlap — not in headlines about futuristic technology. One powerful example is the expanding role of non-physician providers: for example, physical therapists or respiratory therapists can be increasingly positioned to extend access and reduce bottlenecks—from PT direct access with imaging privileges to RT-led ventilator management initiatives. These aren’t flashy innovations, but they meaningfully reduce downstream costs, improve throughput, and free physician bandwidth. Health systems that empower these providers — backed by clear policies, reimbursement strategies, and training — while giving equal weight to these important fundamentals will be far better positioned to weather financial pressures and deliver equitable, patient-centered care.
D. Richelle Heldwein. Chief Risk and Compliance Office of St Johns Health (Jackson, Wyo.): One positive trend that we are finally seeing is the price and need for using travelers for key nursing and clinical positions. While the industry is not where it probably needs to be, it seems to be on the appropriate downward trajectory for costs of these resources for hospitals.
Another positive trend is the stabilization of the supply chain. While we still see pockets of shortages for supplies and for drugs, it appears to be at its most stable time following the pandemic.
One negative trend is the continued increase in high dollar medical malpractice verdicts and settlements. While individual cases tend to make the headlines, the overall impact and cost to hospitals is increasingly alarming. There is much discussion of it among risk and claims management circles, but not much discussion in the general healthcare industry of the overall impact of these cases on insurance premiums and availability of medical malpractice insurance and its impact on the bottom line of hospitals operating margins.
Sandy Balwan, MD. Chief Medical Officer of Northwell Direct; Senior Vice President and Executive Director of Northwell Health IPA, Northwell Health (New Hyde Park, N.Y.): A couple of things:
- Cost and coverage for GLP-1 drugs
- Cost and coverage for Cell and Gene therapies
- Role of AI in diagnosis and treatment
- Legal implications of AI in healthcare
- AI and workforce impact in healthcare
Kathie Seerup, BSN, RN. Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing and Operations Officer of Children’s Hospital Colorado (Aurora): Several underappreciated trends are quietly transforming pediatric healthcare. Mental health integration into primary care is helping identify and treat emotional issues earlier, though it’s not yet standard practice. Wearable health tech is enabling real-time monitoring of chronic conditions in children, but adoption remains slow. Environmental health concerns — like pollution and endocrine disruptors — are gaining attention for their impact on child development, yet funding and awareness lag behind. Finally, grassroots innovation hubs are empowering clinicians to create practical, low-cost solutions that improve care but often go unnoticed.
Donnie Rosario. System Vice President of Laboratory Services at CommonSpirit Health (Chicago): Healthcare is quietly splitting into digital haves and have-nots, and the ripple effects are hard to ignore. Teams further along in their digital transformation are moving faster towards delivering more consistent care, while others are stuck battling the limits of legacy systems and slow change cycles. The data driving this transformation isn’t as uniform as it seems. ICD-10 codes reflect local documentation habits, lab results shift by platform, radiology findings vary by scan protocols, and respiratory therapy results depend on local equipment and workflows. Those inconsistencies can quietly bake unintended variation into new tools and analytics, giving leaders insights that look precise but are built on uneven foundations. As the next generation of healthcare professionals gravitates toward tech-enabled, productivity-focused environments, slower adopters risk falling behind on both care quality and workforce stability.
Peter D. Banko. President and CEO of Baystate Health (Springfield, Mass.): The most underappreciated trend in health care today is the safety and security of our workforce. According to the NIH, our industry has the greatest rates of workplace violence, with our co-workers being five times more likely to be injured than other industries. The AHA reported in June 2025 that up to 76% of healthcare workers have reported experiencing violence. What are our security vulnerabilities and risks? What prevention programs are in place? How can we best support our security teams and all our caregivers? How are we leveraging technology and best practices?
Margaret D. Larkins-Pettigrew, MD. Professor and Academic Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Drexel University School of Medicine (Philadelphia): As conversations around healthcare access, affordability, and financial challenges continue to evolve, it is inspiring to witness the emergence of humility as a guiding principle in our practices. From boardrooms to the bedside, healthcare professionals are embracing humility and grace in their governance and care delivery. This shift is fostering a commitment to optimal care grounded in truth and fairness, particularly for those in rural and underserved communities.
In an era marked by political and social divisions, humility has sparked a collective quest for improvement — encouraging us to be better, do better, and serve all communities with compassion and equity. This unrecognized trend within many healthcare systems reflects a profound understanding that true progress comes from listening, learning, and prioritizing the needs of those we serve. By embracing humility, we can transform challenges into opportunities for meaningful change in healthcare.
Joseph Cavanaugh, PharmD, MBA. Assistant Vice President of Clinical Operations at RWJBarnabas Health, Community Medical Center (West Orange, N.J.): One underappreciated trend is the rapid migration of procedures to ambulatory surgical centers. Advances in minimally invasive techniques, anesthesia safety, and payer incentives are driving higher-acuity cases out of the hospital setting. This shift is reshaping revenue streams, requiring health systems to form partnerships with physicians, optimize supply chains, and ensure post-op care pathways to preserve market share and quality outcomes. Leaders who fail to strategically align with ASC growth risk losing both patient volume and surgical talent to other competitors.
Equally critical is physician and advanced practice provider well-being. Burnout is not just a human resources issue. It directly impacts patient satisfaction, quality metrics, and overall costs. Programs focused on workflow redesign, flexible scheduling, and psychological safety can significantly reduce turnover and malpractice risk while enhancing the patient experience. While burnout rates are decreasing, prioritizing physician and provider well-being should be essential moving forward.
Together, these trends represent transformational opportunities that healthcare leaders must prioritize to remain competitive and resilient.
Charlene A. Hope, PharmD. Chief Pharmacy Quality and Medication Safety Officer at UChicago Medicine: One underappreciated trend is recognizing quality as a true business strategy. Too often, safety and regulatory readiness are treated as compliance costs, when in fact they are powerful levers for reducing waste, improving outcomes, and strengthening financial performance. Organizations that embed quality into leadership decisions and culture will be the ones best positioned to sustain excellence amid today’s challenges.
Hasan B. Alam, MD. Surgeon-in-Chief of Northwestern Memorial Hospital; Chair of Department of Surgery, Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.): One of the underappreciated trends in healthcare is the aging U.S. population. Not only are the patients getting older, sicker, and more complex, but the healthcare providers are also aging and retiring. At the same time the enrollment in medical schools is flat, and young people are shying away from healthcare careers that require many years of education and training, followed by decades of demanding work. The workforce shortage projections may actually be underestimating the problem, and we need creative solutions to ensure that we actually have the manpower to sustain the health system in the decades to come.
JohnRich R. Levine, DNP, MSN. Chief Nursing Officer of Reeves Regional Health (Pecos, Texas): The quiet rise of relational equity, i.e., the trust, cultural understanding, and human connection that shape how care is delivered and received are underappreciated trends in healthcare. While technology, reimbursement, and workforce models dominate the headlines, the daily interactions between nurses, patients, and families often determine outcomes just as powerfully. We underestimate how language barriers, accent comprehension, or even subtle disconnects in communication can influence safety, satisfaction, and healing.
Another overlooked trend is the way rural and community hospitals are becoming proving grounds for innovation. Resource constraints force us to be nimble, whether through creative staffing models, interdisciplinary collaboration, or rethinking how we engage patients beyond the walls of the hospital. What may look like improvisation in a small community today often becomes tomorrow’s best practice nationally.
Finally, we rarely give enough attention to the psychological sustainability of the nursing workforce. Burnout is an image of nurses feeling unheard, undervalued, and unsupported in their growth. Building environments where nurses can see a future for themselves is one of the most powerful determinants of retention and patient safety.
In short: the trends that deserve more attention are our humans. And if we miss them, no innovation will ever fully take root.
Zafar Chaudry, MD. Senior Vice President, Chief Digital Officer and Chief AI and Chief Information Officer at Seattle Children’s: While everyone focuses on the big trends like AI and telehealth, I see a few quieter, more fundamental shifts that deserve far more attention: (1) The human element in technology. It’s no longer just about the tech itself, but about how it’s designed to be truly useful for doctors, nurses, and patients. When technology is intuitive and fits seamlessly into workflows, it stops being a burden and starts being a partner in care; (2) The redesign of physical space. The pandemic forced a reckoning with our physical environments. In healthcare, this means moving away from traditional, isolated “me” spaces and creating collaborative “we” spaces that foster teamwork and efficiency. A more thoughtful design can genuinely reduce stress and improve outcomes; (3) The shift to proactive care. We’re getting better at collecting vast amounts of health data. The real underappreciated trend is how we’re starting to use that data not just to treat sickness, but to predict and prevent it. This moves us from a reactive system to one focused on keeping people well in the first place.
Sunil Dadlani. Executive Vice President, Chief Information & Digital Officer and Chief Cyber Security Officer at Atlantic Health System (Morristown, N.J.): Healthcare is being reshaped by several underappreciated trends that deserve more attention. Clinician mental health and burnout are acknowledged but not addressed through deeper workflow and cultural redesign. Policy shifts such as site-neutral payments are quietly moving care out of hospitals, while food-as-medicine and microbiome care remain underutilized despite strong evidence. Integration of social determinants of health, and true patient data ownership also demand focus. At the same time, Gen Z’s expectations for digital-first, on-demand care and the rise of direct-to-consumer, non-insurance services are disrupting traditional models. These forces may prove just as transformative as AI and deserve greater strategic attention.
Darrell Bodnar. Chief Information Officer of North Country Healthcare (Flagstaff, Ariz.): One underappreciated trend that deserves far more attention is the impact of the insurance industry’s shift toward commercial Medicare Advantage programs and the strain this is placing on rural healthcare revenue cycles. Hospitals like ours are experiencing skyrocketing denials, constantly shifting rules, and an inability to reliably get paid for the care we deliver. While insurers are allowed to retain up to 15% of revenues for administration and profit under federal rules, rural providers are forced to operate on razor-thin margins, often receiving lower reimbursement than traditional Medicare. Nationally, about 7–8% of all healthcare spending goes to insurance administrative costs alone, and when you include provider billing overhead, administrative waste can approach 20% of all healthcare dollars. This dynamic is quietly accelerating rural hospital closures, which doesn’t just threaten access to care, but destabilizes entire communities where hospitals are often the largest employer and economic anchor. It’s a trend that shifts healthcare dollars away from patient care and into insurance overhead, and the consequences for rural America are only beginning to be felt.
Akhil Vijay. Director of Quality Assurances and Performance Improvement at Garden City Hospital (Mich.): Quality assurance and performance improvement represents one of healthcare’s most under-appreciated strategic tools. Most healthcare professionals treat QAPI as a compliance checkbox rather than recognizing its potential as an operational engine that can navigate today’s complex healthcare challenges.
Healthcare will always face evolving problems, workforce shortages, regulatory changes, shifting patient populations, and insurance requirements. Instead of reacting to these challenges piecemeal, systematic leveraging of QAPI to compare existing workflows, policies, and procedures against current regulations and best practices can help to identify the areas of concern, needs improvement, potential risk and or opportunities. This gap analysis becomes the foundation for targeted improvement.
The process is straightforward but powerful: identify improvement opportunities, develop action plans with assigned champions, implement changes, collect data with appropriate benchmarks, and analyze trends to measure effectiveness. This creates a continuous improvement cycle that helps leadership stay proactive rather than reactive.
As healthcare technology advances and data integration improves, QAPI becomes even more valuable for enhancing operational quality, RCM management, provision of quality care services, utilization review, compliance strategies, value based care and patient safety metrics. Understanding where we stand and where we need to go requires leaders with clarity and foresight, making QAPI education essential for any healthcare leadership role.
Len Carter. Chief Human Resources Officer of FHN Memorial Hospital (Freeport, Ill.): The need for greater workforce development beyond what is the primary focus of physicians and nurses. There are ancillary roles such as surgical techs, lab techs, respiratory therapists and other ancillary roles that are experiencing equal or greater crisis in the workforce pipeline. As part of the backbone to care, if they are short, it has an efficiency impact on the physicians and nurses completing their roles.
Michael Wiggins. Assistant Professor of Healthcare Management and Leadership at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (Lubbock): The well-documented pace of health system consolidation is leading to a secondary, and perhaps underappreciated trend: intra-system consolidation, i.e., health systems consolidating within themselves. Hospital companies are closing financially challenged hospitals, and many are shedding low-margin services across their portfolios. These service cuts are putting more pressure on academic medical centers and safety net systems to provide low-margin services, exacerbating the economic challenges they already face. Payment mechanisms must adapt so that academic medical centers and safety net systems can continue to provide these services.
Jacob Schultz. Workforce Development Program Manager of Endeavor Health (Evanston, Ill.): When people think about the healthcare workforce, they tend to picture college graduates and traditional clinical roles. But one of the most underappreciated trends is the power of community-based pathways to build and sustain the workforce we need. We’re seeing success with high school students, career changers, and current employees who are seeking out opportunities to upskill. Coupling that with skills-based hiring and stronger retention strategies, we can transform how we recruit, develop, and keep talent across the healthcare industry.
Vimal Ramjee, MD. Director of Cardiovascular CT Program at Memorial Hospital: A critical but often overlooked trend is the widening gap between rapid digital innovation and the real-world ability of health systems to realize value from it. Having the technology is not the same as achieving clinical readiness or patient benefit. The real opportunity lies in clinician-led deployment, empowering clinicians to lead implementation and integrate AI into care delivery in ways that drive measurable improvement. Organizations that work collaboratively with physician leaders will lead the way in responsible, patient-centered innovation.
Emily Moorhead. President of Henry Ford Health Macomb (Michigan): Unfortunately, one trend in healthcare today that deserves far more attention is the rise of aggressive behaviors against healthcare workers. This includes everything from verbal abuse and threats to sexual assaults and physical violence — and it is escalating across the U.S. healthcare system. These incidents are increasing in every care setting, both inside and outside the hospital. The fear of unsafe work environments is also intensifying workforce shortages. And this challenge extends well beyond physicians and nurses — it touches every role: food and environmental services, biomedical technicians, emergency department staff, medical assistants, and registration teams, to name only a few.
We know that patient and visitor aggression is a leading driver of burnout and turnover. With staffing shortages already critical, every preventable departure affects operations, access, and cost.
Aggressive behavior against healthcare workers has become a growing enterprise risk — spanning safety, workforce stability, financial performance, operations, and reputation. Proactive leadership is more important than ever. We are accountable for creating an environment where everyone feels safe — our staff, physicians, partners, patients, and the broader community. It will take all of us, working together, to preserve the sanctity of our healing environments. Empowering people to speak up and escalate concerns will be essential to protecting both our teams and the communities we serve.
Wayne Gillis. President and CEO of Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services (Gallup, N.M.): The Workforce Shift from Career to Gig MentalityYounger providers and nurses are moving away from the “career-long hospital loyalty” model. More clinicians want schedule flexibility, work-life balance, and gig-style contracting (locums, travel nursing, telehealth shifts).This creates both risk (continuity, culture loss, higher costs) and opportunity (new staffing models, marketplaces for shifts, hybrid work).
We have had to really redesign the employment offerings for our organization. We added Weekend Bailor programs, developed an internal travelers program, Job sharing, and offered full time for employees who are not residing in our area full time.
The Rise of “Invisible Infrastructure”
Cloud, cybersecurity, and interoperability investments rarely get headlines, but they’re becoming existential to hospital operations. Downtime from cyberattacks or failed EHR integrations already costs systems millions — yet boards often underinvest.
We have gone down that journey with redirecting capital funds to reinvest in our core infrastructure, WIFI and Telecom investment. It was a hard sell to many of the directors because it is not seen like with a department remodel.
Lisa Gossett, MSN, RN. System Chief Nursing Officer and Chief Experience Officer of Premier Health (Dayton, Ohio): As we focus on technology and AI we need to remember the power of human connection. Real care happens in that genuine human to human connection. As we rely more on tools to help us communicate and gather information it is critical that we harness our “Power Skills” of interpersonal, social, and communication skills – skills that we can minimize by calling them “soft.” Our ability to connect with others is essential to the care we provide and every caregivers’ well-being. Maintaining human connection is essential, no matter the role we play — whether as leaders, frontline caregivers, or in support areas like IT and finance. Beyond systems, data, and treatments, it is our shared humanness that builds trust, fosters healing, and reminds us why our work matters. Every interaction, from bedside care to behind-the-scenes decisions, is an opportunity to show empathy and compassion. By prioritizing connection, we honor the dignity of patients, our workforce and the purpose that drives us.
Sarina Rodriques. Associate Vice President of System Lab Operations at Rush University System for Health (Chicago): One underappreciated trend in healthcare is the rise of genetic testing available to consumers. This trend, however, highlights a disparity, as only those with the financial means can afford the substantial costs, often exceeding $700 per panel. Moreover, the actual value of this predictive information remains uncertain. It is unclear whether it will lead to improved patient outcomes or simply cause confusion, anxiety, and unnecessary healthcare spending.
Matt Chance. Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Scottish Rite for Children (Dallas): There’s so much focus on incorporating technology/AI advancements into healthcare but the importance of developing personal relationships is often overlooked. For patients and families, it’s rounding regularly, listening closely, walking someone to the clinic, or finding the time to add referrals into already packed schedules. For staff, big burnout management programs get attention, but real resilience comes from engagement fostered from small, everyday actions like checking in and having intentional one-on-one conversations. Leaders who show up in a quiet, servant-minded way create the trust and psychological safety teams need. Ultimately, healthcare leadership is less about impersonal/autonomous interactions and more about genuine human connection.
David Marcozzi, MD. Chief Clinical Officer of University of Maryland Medical Center; Associate Dean of Clinical Affairs at University of Maryland School of Medicine (Baltimore): U.S. healthcare faces challenges in several overlapping areas. It struggles with a persistent supply–demand mismatch: more patients need care than our workforce and facilities can support. The result is long wait times for treatments, unsafe levels of emergency department crowding, and growing frustration for both patients and providers. Expanding primary care and building outpatient/short-stay diagnostic and procedural capabilities are essential to address this mismatch.
Meanwhile, healthcare costs continue to rise, taking up an increasingly larger share of the U.S. GDP, which is unsustainable. Hospitals share part of this responsibility. We need to accelerate the adoption of standardized, evidence-based practices to ensure the highest quality while addressing high-cost drivers. Automation and strong change management efforts are other key solutions—helping to bend the cost curve toward sustained, high-quality care.
Amit Vashist, MD, MBA. Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer of Ballad Health (Johnson City, Tenn.): In a field that often chases complexity and shiny solutions, I believe the real story lies in the fundamentals we tend to overlook:
- Data: Healthcare is overflowing with information but still struggles to turn it into empowered, real-time insights for caregivers at the bedside.
- Trust: The erosion of relational infrastructure between caregivers and patients quietly undermines outcomes. When trust breaks down, people stop speaking up, teams stop collaborating, and patients stop believing we are truly on their side.
- Unlearning: In a culture that prizes experience, clinging to old practices and rigid hierarchies has become a liability. Healthcare is in constant flux, and the leaders who thrive will be those with the humility to let go of old answers and create space for new ways of thinking.
Nariman Heshmati, MD. Chief Physician and Operations Executive at Lee Physician Group (Fort Myers, FL): All of the chatter in healthcare (and everywhere else) has been about how we are implementing AI solutions, but there are some interesting and underappreciated trends in healthcare that don’t involve groundbreaking technology. For instance, patient expectations continue to desire accessibility that provides healthcare solutions. Patients don’t want to wait on hold for 10 minutes, be told the next appointment is 6 months out, and then have a challenge figuring out what other services they need. If they have a concern that they have diabetes, they want to rapidly get in (and sometimes that’s a virtual visit) but also seamlessly be set up to see a dietician, get advice on exercise/weight loss, and have a follow up plan to adjust any necessary medications. They don’t want to navigate a complex system but rather have the system be designed to help guide them and deliver the best outcomes. Healthcare systems for many years did this in areas like oncology but are now responding and expanding those offerings to other common disease states.
Andrew Molosky, MBA. President and CEO of Chapters Health System (Temple Terrace, Fla.): It is no secret that there are a lot of headwinds in healthcare right now but so often we forget to celebrate the opportunities at hand when we discuss the macro environment. Numerous studies have shown that the current young professional finds a high degree of desire in feeling connected to a company’s mission and purpose. Healthcare, and specifically Chapters Health’s purpose and mission speaks to that immensely. As healthcare providers, we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of that factor if your company’s culture is right. Feeling as if you are making a difference and contributing to the betterment of our communities is a prime function of what healthcare is supposed to be. With the rise in profit-driven motivations in healthcare those companies who put their employees and mission as their top priority have a great window to capitalize on this underappreciated trend.
Molly Moran, DNP, RN. Associate Vice President of Ambulatory Nursing at Rush University Medical Center (Chicago): One underappreciated trend is the rising need for RN-led chronic care clinics as ambulatory practices face growing volumes of patients with multiple, complex conditions. These clinics leverage registered nurses to provide proactive disease management, education, and care coordination, improving outcomes while easing physician capacity constraints. Expanding RN-driven models positions ambulatory care to better manage chronic disease, reduce avoidable ED visits, and support value-based care goals.
Jake Stover. Vice President of Finance at UK HealthCare (Lexington, Ky.): One of the underappreciated trends that we are focusing on at UK Healthcare is core technology investment. Ensuring that organizations have sufficient development on core technologies enables growth. Without stable core technologies such as ERP, EMR, and enterprise operating systems, speed to growth becomes more challenging as leadership teams spend valuable resource hours battling antiquated systems. The ROI is difficult to measure, but it is a clear differentiator in health systems that can integrate and organize at higher speeds.
Joseph Carr, RN. Vice President of Supply Chain at Akron Children’s (Ohio): One underappreciated but urgent trend in healthcare is the looming shortage of experienced Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs). Many of today’s CSCOs — who pioneered the modernization of healthcare — are approaching retirement, and the bench of qualified successors is shallow. The role has evolved far beyond contracting and inventory management, now requiring a strong clinical acumen, operational oversight across multiple departments, long-term strategic planning, systems analysis and design, and performance management with a people-centric culture. Without intentional development pipelines, health systems risk a significant leadership gap in a function critical to cost control, care quality, and resilience. Hospital executives must act now with talent development and industry bodies to cultivate the next generation of supply chain leaders.
Jimmy Chung, MD. Chief Medical Officer-Advantus of Bon Secours Mercy Health (Cincinnati): Healthcare professionals have a habit of looking only inward when it comes to industry trends and changes that require us to consider how they affect our practice and clinical operations. However, we need to be more perceptive of how the public sees healthcare, especially the newer generations. Virtually all services in our daily lives are now manageable by consumers instantly on their phones when and where they want to. There is no real reason why this cannot be the case for the majority of healthcare services. Patients used to wait weeks or longer for an appointment with a physician to ask a health related question; now they can get an answer within a few seconds. And with AI becoming more and more reliable everyday, it is becoming the go-to for many, who also have found the answers to be more accurate and empathetic than a real human.
We physicians have always claimed that “the doctor knows what is best for their patients.” I’m no longer sure if I agree with this assertion, as there is growing data suggesting that a computer looking at a million points of data from thousands of sources could be more accurate than a physician with a few hundred encounters in their experience.
In addition, while some physicians may cringe at the thought of giving away freely to the public all that medical knowledge they had to earn the right to master over years of education, the reality is that health information is easier to access and understand than ever before. The practice of speaking in a dead language and hiding research in inaccessible academic journals ostensibly to “protect the public from themselves” is itself archaic and unnecessary. The longer medical professionals separate themselves from the public behind white coats and titles, the more the public will grow to distrust them and rely on AI-aided self help. This last point is not necessarily a bad thing; I believe AI will have its appropriate place in the everyday lives of modern humans. Generally speaking, this is good for society and empowers individuals. What the medical profession needs to do is be prepared to reinvent itself to align with modern consumers who want to manage their own health on their terms, using modern tools. When the car was invented and people stopped riding horses, saddle makers would have failed if they thought the solution was to make nicer saddles. They had to learn how to make car seats!
Frederick L. Greene, MD. Medical Director of Cancer Data Services at Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute (Charlotte, N.C.): In my opinion, a significant misconception regarding healthcare is that our hospital, state and national cancer registries are merely static collection repositories for data regarding cancer patients. In fact, all of our cancer registries, maintained by dedicated cancer registrars (oncology data specialists) are vital to statistical reporting of patient outcomes, planning of prevention and screening strategies, creation of clinical trials and development of appropriate legislation and funding opportunities to support cancer patients and the institutions that care for them. In addition, maintenance of our cancer registries is vital to those who must decide on the development of structural needs and healthcare personnel requirements in caring for oncology patients in the future.
Scott Kashman. President and CEO of Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside (Jacksonville, Fla.): One underappreciated trend is the shift toward collective problem-solving in healthcare where health systems, community organizations, employers and innovators work together to address access and population health challenges. Just as real-time predictive analytics enable more precise care and planning, the future will be defined by collaborative networks that combine clinical excellence with communitywide partnerships to strengthen health outcomes across entire populations.
Stephen Merz. Vice President and COO of Sheppard Pratt Solutions (Baltimore): Population growth factors. There is a discounting of the underlying population trends impacting utilization. In many communities we see nationally, the fastest growing population are seniors, particularly in the 65+ and 85+ population categories. In other regions, youth are the fastest growing segment. This can be particularly important in service planning for behavioral healthcare services. Leaders need to be mindful of how these trends impact service planning and programming.
Jahmal Miller. Chief Administrative Officer of Dignity Health Mercy Medical Group, CommonSpirit Health (Chicago): The economic and societal impact of health inequities and the proactive, data-driven strategies for achieving health equity.
Michael ‘Brad’ McAlister, MD. Medical Director of Millard-Henry Clinic; Medical Director, AdvantagePoint, Southwest Clinical Integration Network at Lifepoint Health (Brentwood, Tenn.): Social determinants of health have been discussed for years, but the ability to capture and act on them systematically is still underappreciated. Most organizations still do not yet have consistent workflows to identify food insecurity, transportation barriers, health literacy gaps, etc. When SDOH are integrated into care plans, supported by partnership with community resources, we see significant improvements in chronic disease control and reductions in avoidable utilization. The organizations that master this will have a quiet but powerful advantage in value-based care.
Eric Witte, DPT. COO of Genesis Orthopedics & Sports Medicine (Chicago): An underappreciated trend is the shifting ‘front door’ of healthcare. We’ve moved from primary care physicians, to PAs and NPs, to digital-first providers, and now even AI is often the first touchpoint. Utah recently designated physical therapists as primary care providers, which shows that policies and care pathways are still evolving. The real question is how policy can guide this evolution so access grows, care remains safe, and communities flourish- without letting turf wars or technology alone set the rules.
Randi H. Goldman, MD. Associate Professor of Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell; Program Director of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Fellowship at Northwell Health (New Hyde Park, N.Y.): Patient experience has evolved beyond hospitality touches to become a measurable driver of outcomes. We have evidence that trust, communication, and continuity influence adherence, recovery, and health equity. Yet, investment in patient-centered design often lags behind investment in technology or infrastructure.
In addition, fertility and reproductive longevity are emerging as critical public health issues. Demographic shifts, cancer survivorship, and broader conversations about family-building are pressing issues. Healthcare systems that recognize this early will be better positioned to meet the needs of the next generation of patients.
Kristin Spurr. Assistant Vice President of Perioperative Services at MedStar Washington Hospital Center (D.C.): Incivility and bullying: An underrecognized risk towards leaders,
incivility and bullying in healthcare — including behaviors directed toward leaders — are underappreciated drivers of patient safety events, culture erosion, and workforce turnover. Disrespectful behaviors disrupt communication and increase the risk of errors, particularly in high-acuity areas like the OR and ICU. When leaders are undermined or subjected to hostile behavior, accountability weakens, change initiatives slow, and leadership turnover rises. Toxic culture, more than pay or scheduling, is often the true cause of attrition, yet civility is rarely measured in stay interviews or engagement surveys. Teams also lack structured training in respectful conflict resolution and escalation, leaving incivility unaddressed.
Civility should be treated as a measurable competency, with clear expectations, accountability in evaluations, and reporting elevated to the board alongside workplace violence metrics. Positioning civility as both a patient safety and workforce strategy can strengthen culture, improve outcomes, and help retain top talent.
Donna Royster. Senior Imaging Manager of Providence Medical Center (Everett, Wash.): Prior authorization delays have long disrupted care and drained clinical resources. The new CMS Final Rule changes that, mandating faster turnaround times, API integration, and transparency. But the real game-changer? AI.
AI is quietly transforming prior authorization by automating up to 76% of routine approvals, reducing administrative burden and freeing clinicians to focus on patients. In radiology, AI also flags unnecessary imaging post-service, aligning with national guidelines without delaying care or undermining clinical judgment.
With AI comes efficiency — but implementation in healthcare settings remains uneven and underprioritized. Despite the promise, many hospitals are struggling to operationalize these tools effectively, missing opportunities to improve care and compliance.
These aren’t just tech upgrades — they’re strategic enablers of timely, equitable, and cost-effective care. Hospitals that adopt AI-driven solutions early will lead in both compliance and care quality. It’s time we recognize AI not as a back-office tool, but as a frontline force for better outcomes.
Scott W. Jarvis, MD. Associate Vice President of Clinical Affairs at OhioHealth Van Wert Hospital: I believe that there are three major unappreciated trends in overall healthcare. First, everyone has heard of artificial intelligence and its penetration into healthcare, mostly in the area of diagnostics and imaging with ambient AI in the offices a close third. However, most are unaware of the surging trends to utilize this technology for claims processing, clinical decision support and patient engagement. These trends in AI should be very beneficial to the everyday operations at our facilities. Secondly, insurance coverage models are definitely garnering interest especially with Medicare Advantage plans and potential Medicaid cuts. These shifts may lead to increasingly fragmented coverage and have the potential to affect preventative care. Lastly, supply chain vulnerability to disruptions is another underappreciated but potentially very impactful problem. Strides have been made to decrease the risk of disruptions through automating inventory and procurement but this is a slow and laborious process that overall in the long haul reduces costs and improves care delivery but the adoption is lacking.
To me, my concerns lie within the realm of rural medicine and healthcare delivery. Challenges here are ongoing with large budgetary cuts despite a $50 billion CMS Rural Health Transformation program. That $50 billion needs proper oversight to ensure it gets to the facilities in need and doesn’t get diverted to other suburban and urban facilities through loopholes and favored lobbying. Those monies are needed on the frontline where the care is delivered, not in corporate offices padding someone’s budget or emergency fund. Cybersecurity is another concern due to the limited resources of smaller hospitals to be able to afford proper safeguards against such attacks. Rural facilities have been increasingly targeted over the last several years and this problem needs to be addressed not only for financial security but also for the protection of patient information and care delivery. My last point is the gaining importance of telehealth through virtual hospitals, hospitalists and remote staffing models. Many larger systems are developing the “virtual hospital model” to centrally serve the outlying rural facilities within their footprint. This will aid in patient management, “keeping care local” and providing support to the local facilities to be able to serve an aging population. Many of these services are merely in the planning phase and this needs to be placed into the preferential pool of integration and strategy to aid in the survival of rural hospitals nationwide.
Charlene J. Wilson. Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer of Rochester (N.Y.) Regional Health: The following trends may not grab headlines, but they’re quietly shaping the future of healthcare:
Burnout remains high among healthcare workers, with nearly half reporting post-pandemic symptoms; therefore, traditional wellness/EAP programs aren’t enough. HR leaders are now exploring customized mental health solutions, including one-on-one check ins, mindfulness training and flexible scheduling. In addition, healthcare is moving from reactive treatment to proactive prevention, especially for hard-to-reach communities. AI-driven personalization is helping tailor wellness plans and outreach strategies to meet the unique needs of individuals who often fall through the cracks.
Anthony P. Weiss, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston): One underappreciated trend in healthcare is the need to move beyond short-term efficiency metrics and focus on building true “learning health organizations.” As demands on clinicians grow, the key to safety and quality will be our ability to adapt dynamically, much like a living system, by learning from variation, feedback, and even failure. We talk a lot about technology and AI, but the real differentiator will be whether health systems can create cultures that continuously learn and self-correct. That’s where the future of patient safety and organizational resilience lies.
Michael J. Zappa, MD. Chief Clinical Officer of Cape Fear Valley Health System (Fayetteville, N.C.): Among the underappreciated trends in healthcare today is the significant cost of the evolving physician practice model. It is far too late to debate whether the change is for the better or worse; the fact is the practice of medicine is different. Gone are the days of physician independence, autonomy, and virtually guaranteed financial success and freedom – this has been replaced by better work life balance, less business headaches, and more time to focus on clinical care. However, the practice of today and tomorrow is and will be more expensive – doctors will no longer work all day and then take call at night – the new model follows the trail blazed by emergency physicians, then followed by hospitalists, intensivists, surgicalists, and laborists: work is divided between day shifts and night shifts. 24/7 coverage that might have been provided by one or two physicians in the past now requires at least four physicians, covering day shifts and night shifts. These doctors are paid for their time – regardless of case volume; I predict this trend will grow to include every specialist needed to provide acute hospital care. The challenge will be keeping the budget balanced.
James Mladucky. Vice President of Design and Construction at Indiana University Health (Indianapolis): One of the most overlooked trends in healthcare is how the design of spaces directly shapes both the workforce experience and patient outcomes. As caregiver shortages and burnout intensify, intentional design can ease pressure on staff while making care delivery more efficient. With a growing senior population and limited access to care in rural communities, healthcare facilities must be planned with flexibility, technology integration, and community connections at their core. Just as importantly, identifying ways to incorporate mental health services into everyday care settings, rather than siloing it, will strengthen care delivery and lead to better patient outcomes.
Elham Yousef, MD. Vice President and Chief Clinical Integration of Standardization and Specialty Care at Hackensack Meridian Health (Edison, N.J.): In my opinion, three underappreciated trends in healthcare deserve more attention:
1) Team-based care models – Patients cared for by integrated teams of physicians, advanced practice providers, pharmacists, and navigators consistently experience better outcomes, higher satisfaction and fewer hospitalizations. Yet these models are underappreciated because they are often misperceived as ‘task shifting’ rather than true skill optimization. In reality, team-based care allows physicians to practice at the top of their license, reduces burnout, and represents one of the most effective, evidence-based ways to deliver patient-centered care in today’s resource-constrained environment.
2) Ambient documentation and workflow automation – Adoption has been slow, with most systems still in pilot phases, and it is often framed narrowly as an ‘efficiency tool.’ In reality, it is a powerful workforce sustainability strategy. By reducing the documentation burden that consumes up to half of a physician’s day, ambient tools restore time for patient care, reduce after-hours charting, and directly address burnout. Beyond improving well-being, workflow automation also enhances data quality, allows teams to work at the top of their license, and reduces decision fatigue.
3) Standardization – Often seen as ‘boring’ compared to innovation and AI, but standardization is the strongest lever for improving outcomes, enhancing operational efficiency and reducing cost of care. It is quite the backbone that allows systems to scale excellence and compete in a value-driven environment.
Margie Zeglen. System Assistant Vice President of EHPP Population Health, Quality and Risk Adjustment at Endeavor Health Physician Partners (Evanston, Ill.): Some of the most underappreciated trends include that strong core care lays the foundation for successful value-based care. This includes supporting primary care physicians with care teams and technology, integrating behavioral health into routine care, and enabling patient engagement between visits. Encouraging specialists to have important conversations earlier — so care plans reflect patient goals — while improving outcomes, reducing burnout, and preventing unnecessary unwanted hospitalizations.
Vi-Anne Antrum. Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer of Cone Health (Greensboro, N.C.): One underappreciated trend in healthcare is shared governance with our frontline teams. This is essential for nurses, physicians, therapists, case managers, social workers, pharmacists, other clinicians, and non-clinical colleagues alike. When our teams have a voice in shaping the strategic execution of initiatives in the organization, everyone wins, most especially our patients and consumers! This is how you build a culture where every single person sees themselves as an essential player in accomplishing the vision and how you create a healthy work environment that minimizes friction and duplication of efforts. People want to have a voice, and it is our job as executive leaders to ensure they have one. For example, at Cone Health, we are creating a clinical advisory council to inform the work our Enterprise Operating Council does. We have employee councils to capture the feedback of our frontline teams across the enterprise.
Another underappreciated trend in healthcare is cybersecurity. This can often feel like extra work and a burden until you experience a cyberattack or are affected by things like the Crowd Strike outage. Cybersecurity suddenly takes center stage, and people are willing to do whatever it takes to get our technology back online. Cybersecurity can carry enormous financial, operational, and reputational issues for any organization that can limit access to care for communities. I’m proud of the work our team has done to reduce our susceptibility to any attacks of this nature!
Raaj Kurapati. Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Operating Officer of University of Tennessee Health Science Center (Memphis): There is a renewed focus on access to good health care in rural communities and health sciences universities, especially state supported institutions, are being challenged to bridge this gap with resources/financial support being tied to success in doing so. Additionally, there is a more direct expectation that funding will be tied to meeting the workforce needs of the state(s) to bridge the gaps in access to health care in rural communities.
Jeremy Stephens. Chief Human Resources Officer and Executive Vice President of Tidelands Health (Georgetown, S.C.): Recruiting and retaining healthcare professionals will continue to be a challenge. At Tidelands Health, we have grown to value even more the innovative programs and partnerships we’ve developed with local schools, universities and technical colleges to engage students and support their development and training. In addition, our unique collaboration with our marketing department for targeted, digital-first recruitment of providers and staff has generated impressive results.
Jean Ann Larson, EdD. Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Development, Heersink School of Medicine at University of Alabama at Birmingham; Chief Leadership Development Officer of UAB Medicine (Birmingham, Ala.): Several trends I am seeing from where I sit is even more emphasis on developing leaders while incorporating some of the newest thinking in leadership science. I am seeing more ‘people focused’ strategies. We’ve given a lot of lip service to ‘people are our most important resource.’ Now we must actually make this a reality. Ironically with some of the current financial challenges, we are realizing that we can’t ‘cut our way out’ of a budget crisis. We need to support and retain our current employees by investing in their learning and development and by offering innovative types of employee benefits.
Paola Buitrago, PhD, RN. Vice President of Workforce Optimization and Strategy at Emory Healthcare (Atlanta): From my perspective as a clinical workforce expert, some of the most critical yet underappreciated, trends in healthcare today are the growing demand for alternative staffing models and flexible work arrangements among clinical staff. While we have mainly focused on recruitment pipelines, the real issue is not just attracting new talent but also retaining the existing workforce who are increasingly seeking work-life balance and a shift away from traditional and rigid schedules. I do believe that retention is the new recruitment, we must focus on reducing the experienced clinician turnover due to burnout and frustration. Another overlooked trend is the impact of digital fragmentation on clinical burnout. Many of the digital tools we have implemented while well intentioned continue to create significant disruption and burden. Our attention should shift from sole implementation to human center design models that involve the clinician from start to finish. The future of healthcare does not depend on any single technology, but on our collective ability to rethink and redesign our systems.
Sophia G. Holder. Executive Vice President and CFO of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: What often does not get enough attention is the way foundational elements of healthcare – our revenue cycle, supply chain, and workforce are becoming as strategically important as new clinical innovations. Too much of the conversation is about technology in isolation, when in reality the real challenge and opportunity is in how these systems integrate to support access, equity, and sustainability. Revenue cycle, for example, is not just an administrative function; it is increasingly a resilience strategy, especially as cyber threats and payer complexities grow. Workforce is another area where the dialogue lags behind the urgency. This is no longer simply about filling vacancies but about creating long-term pathways that nurture well-being, engagement, and leadership. For pediatric providers, like Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, these pressures are amplified by unique payer dynamics and demographic realities, making financial stewardship inseparable from mission delivery. I believe that leaders who focus on strengthening these underappreciated foundations will be best positioned to navigate disruption and deliver enduring value to the patients and communities we serve.
Huzaifah Salat, MD. Regional Medical Director of Respiratory Care, Pulmonologist, Intensivist and Advanced Bronchoscopist at Advocate Health (Milwaukee): A largely underrecognized trend in healthcare is the integration of precision medicine in pulmonology, particularly in the management of lung cancer in the community. The role of pulmonologists has advanced well beyond performing biopsies; we now play a central role across the entire lung cancer care continuum, including early detection, diagnosis, staging, and treatment planning. With innovations such as robotic bronchoscopy, next-generation sequencing, and liquid biopsies, we are better equipped to support biomarker-driven therapies that improve patient outcomes. In the era of personalized medicine, precision-based care should be regarded not as the exception but as the foundation of modern thoracic oncology.
Alonna Adair. Chief Nurse Executive of Claremore Indian Hospital (Okla.): Digital Equity – Telehealth has been praised as one of healthcare’s biggest breakthroughs, but the truth is it hasn’t reached everyone equally. Patients in rural areas often face poor internet connections, while others struggle with digital literacy or simply don’t own the devices needed to connect. For them, what was meant to expand access has instead created another barrier. If digital health is going to fulfill its promise, we have to design it with equity at the center — so no patient is left behind.
Michele Szkolnicki, MEd, BSN, RN. Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer of Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center: In healthcare, the most transformative shifts often happen quietly: beneath the surface of headlines and outside the spotlight of major innovation campaigns. As a nurse executive, I’ve seen firsthand how subtle trends can have outsized impact on care delivery, workforce engagement, and patient outcomes. These are the movements that deserve more attention; not because they’re flashy, but because they’re foundational.
Here are six underappreciated trends that are quietly reshaping the future of healthcare:
Quiet Quitting & Workforce Strategy Shifts
The emotional disengagement known as “quiet quitting” is prompting a reevaluation of how we lead, support, and retain our teams. It’s not just about staffing metrics. It’s about restoring purpose, redesigning workloads, and cultivating cultures of connection and meaning.
AI-Augmented Nursing & Predictive Analytics
Artificial intelligence is enhancing, not replacing, clinical judgment. Early warning systems powered by AI are helping nurses anticipate deterioration up to 48 hours in advance, allowing for earlier interventions and improved patient safety.
Virtual Nursing Units & Remote Care Models
Virtual nursing is evolving into a fully integrated model of remote care. Through asynchronous consultations, remote monitoring, and even holographic interactions, nurses are extending their reach to underserved communities and therefore redefining access and equity.
Low-Tech, High-Impact Workflow Innovations
Sometimes, the most powerful innovations are the simplest. Tools like automated scheduling, secure messaging, and digital rounding are streamlining workflows, reducing burnout, and improving patient experience, often with faster ROI than complex systems.
Personalized Preventative Care
Healthcare is shifting from reactive to proactive. AI-driven personalization is enabling tailored wellness plans, predictive screenings, and culturally sensitive engagement strategies that improve outcomes and reduce long-term costs.
Nurse-Led Innovation in Care Protocols
Nurses are leading the charge in rethinking care delivery. From ICU mobility protocols to intuitive patient education tools, nurse-led innovation is driving measurable improvements in recovery, safety, and satisfaction.
These trends may not always make the front page, but they are shaping the future of healthcare in profound and lasting ways. As leaders, we must not only recognize them — we must champion them. Because the quiet revolutions are often the ones that matter most.
Ria Paul, MD. Clinical Associate Professor of Stanford University School of Medicine; Chief Medical Officer at Santa Clara Family Health Plan (San Jose, Calif.): The most underappreciated trend is the integration of Behavioral health in mainstream health care delivery. This is an important aspect, and much work is underway however data integration, care coordination inclusive of behavioral health still has a long way to go. There should be focus on removal of barriers like, regulatory support for data sharing, appropriate reimbursement by payers as ways to reverse this trend.
Tina Garrison. COO of SSM Health St. Louis and S. IL Region: One of the most overlooked trends in healthcare today is the urgent need for deeper integration across the continuum of care. While community hospitals play a vital role in serving their local populations, it is not sustainable to continue to build out all levels of care at all hospitals. To achieve truly exceptional outcomes, patients must receive the right care in the right setting.
This means concentrating high-acuity services and complex surgeries in locations that perform them frequently and with proven excellence. It also requires the strategic discipline to define which sites deliver which levels of care within each service line and for what patient populations. That clarity drives better quality, lowers costs, and enhances the patient experience.
Integration isn’t just a buzzword – today, it is the foundation of a sustainable, high-performing health system.
Dionne Dixon, PhD. Regional Executive Director of NW at CommonSpirit Health (Chicago): The Underappreciated Trends in Healthcare That Deserve More Attention
Several underappreciated trends in healthcare that should be taken more seriously are adopting micro credentialing and modular training to rapidly upskill and reskill the workforce, scaling neurodiversity pipelines for workforce expansion and reliability, investing in home- and community-based care infrastructure to shift volumes out of hospitals, and embedding climate resilience into operational and predictive strategy. These are not distant futures — they are proven playbooks from other industries waiting for healthcare leaders to implement. Lean and Toyota Production System principles have already shown how continuous improvement becomes a culture, not a tactic. High-reliability organizations in aviation and hospitality demonstrate that safety, standardization, and customer experience can scale with discipline. Healthcare doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel — it just needs to finally start using it.
1. Micro Credentialing, Modular Training, and Workforce Agility
Traditional degrees take too long to meet today’s workforce shortages. Micro Credentialing and modular training offer faster, stackable pathways into critical roles. The Northwest Region of CommonSpirit’s Allied Academy, New York’s 1199SEIU Training & Upgrading Fund, and Kaiser Permanente’s educational benefits program already show how staff can be prepared in months, not years.
Equally important is upskilling and reskilling existing staff to work across evolving care models, from acute inpatient to community and home-based roles. Modular programs make it possible to reconfigure the workforce quickly, ensuring skills evolve alongside care delivery rather than lagging years behind. Systems that embed these pathways into career ladders and hiring pipelines will outpace those clinging to degree-only models.
2. Neurodiversity and Workforce Inclusion
Manufacturing has decades of proof that neurodivergent pipelines improve quality and retention. Healthcare is only beginning to apply this lesson. Virginia Mason Franciscan Health–CommonSpirit’s Neurodivergent Friendly Allied Academy pilot trains and hires neurodivergent individuals with standout results in recruitment, retention, loyalty, performance, and reliability. Similarly, Cleveland Clinic’s pilot programs in sterile processing and allied health roles report lower turnover and stronger reliability. The issue is scale — too many organizations still treat these as ‘pilots’ instead of mainstream strategies. Leaders who act now will close staffing gaps that others are still struggling to fill.
3. Home-Based and Community Care Infrastructure
Hospital-at-home gets headlines, but the real story is the infrastructure. Mayo Clinic and Intermountain Healthcare are building logistics, supply chains, and workforce models that deliver diagnostics, infusion therapy, and rehab directly to homes and communities. This shift could offload 20–30% of inpatient demand in the next decade. Systems that invest early in these models will be positioned to own tomorrow’s volume.
4. Climate Resilience as a Core Strategy
Climate change is not just about catastrophic events like hurricanes or wildfires—it’s the chronic disruptions straining operations every day: dialysis patients during heat waves, supply chain interruptions from regional fires, and shifting populations due to migration. NYU Langone has begun embedding climate metrics into operational planning, tracking heat impacts on vulnerable patients and mapping supply chain risk. Most systems, however, remain unprepared. If climate resilience isn’t on your dashboard, you’re not planning — you’re reacting.
Theresa McDonnell, DNP, RN. Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Executive of Duke University Health System (Durham, N.C.): Two underappreciated trends deserve more attention: community-based at-home care, and integrated, lifestyle-based prevention. Bringing care into neighborhoods and homes, such as virtual nursing, remote monitoring and observation, and hospital-at-home, promotes keeping people near support systems, and preserves acute capacity. Pairing clinical care with daily rituals, such as nutrition, movement, sleep, and connection co-designed with patients, improves adherence and outcomes and builds a more humane, sustainable system.
Polly Davenport, RN. Senior Vice President and Market CEO of Ascension (St. Louis) IL: For years in healthcare, we’ve talked about the sometimes ill-defined concept of patient satisfaction. I’m pleased that Ascension has shifted to delivering a true consumer experience, integrating the human, physical and digital touchpoints needed to ensure a positive encounter. This includes not only our patients themselves, but also the family members and friends who support them. With the pivot to a true consumer experience, our efforts span far beyond the clinical visit to include encounters with scheduling, billing, follow up and even social support. With 65% of U.S. adults reporting healthcare is overwhelming, emphasizing the entire experience will further engender the trust of those we serve.
Thomas W. Scott. President and CEO of CentraState Healthcare System (Freehold, NJ): There continues to be a growing need for memory care and senior services, driven by the aging population, incidence of dementia and neurodegenerative conditions and the demand for specialized care. The U.S. memory care market is projected to grow to $11.5 billion by 2033, highlighting the importance of providing seamless access to and continuity of medical care to the senior population. Key players operating in the market are strategizing through partnerships, acquisitions, expansions, and collaborations. At CentraState, we are enhancing the dedicated healthcare services to seniors by offering levels of memory care, long-term care and subacute services, rehabilitative skilled nursing and assisted living services.
Thomas Maddox, MD. Executive Director of Healthcare Innovation Lab at BJC Healthcare (St. Louis); Director of Clinical Innovation, Medicine Department and Medicine Professor, Cardiology at WashU Medicine (St. Louis): The biggest underappreciated need I see in healthcare is a focus on good workflow design. With the current focus and hype on AI, many have been distracted by the need to carefully understand and optimize workflows that will truly unlock the value of AI (or any other technology). Here at BJC HealthCare and WashU Medicine, all our innovation pilots focus not only on technology, but also the people and processes needed to realize their value.
Wencesley A. Paez, MD. Director of Clinical Research Operations at Fox Chase Cancer Center, Temple University Hospital System (Philadelphia): One aspect of healthcare warranting greater focus is the integration of artificial intelligence to enhance operational efficiency. At present, AI-driven tools are increasingly being deployed to forecast patient volumes, optimize resource allocation, and streamline administrative workflows. By automating routine and time-consuming tasks, these technologies allow clinical staff to dedicate more attention to direct patient care, thereby reducing inefficiencies that drive higher costs and contribute to workforce burnout. This advantage is also evident in research, where such systems have been implemented to improve trial matching and participant recruitment, resulting in shorter activation timelines and increased overall study feasibility. Ultimately, these innovations support the provision of novel investigational therapies to eligible patients.
Soula Banich. COO of IU Health North Hospital and IU Health Saxony Hospital (Fishers, Ind.): An often-underappreciated trend in healthcare is that, despite decades of efforts to control costs, expenses continue to rise. This isn’t simply a matter of inefficiency; it is driven by rapid technological advancements, the growing complexity of care, and an aging population. These realities mean that the traditional levers, such as cutting costs at the margins or squeezing efficiencies from existing systems, are no longer enough. We don’t have the option to stand still. The organizations that will thrive are those willing to fundamentally rethink how care is delivered, how value is created, and how innovation can be scaled responsibly. Those who continue to operate within yesterday’s model will be left behind.
Dani Hackner, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical and Academic Officer of Southcoast Health System (New Bedford, Mass.): In the face of the shifting shortages in key specialties such as anesthesia, imaging, and primary care, one of the most under-appreciated trends is the rapid evolution of the human-machine interface in healthcare. Changing the way we think about wellness, safety, and efficiency, the human-machine interface is increasingly immersive, multimodal, ambient and feedback driven. Quality and safety depend on our ability to communicate among machines, colleagues, patients, and caregivers in real time and in multiple channels. Whether molding a joint surface, employing a surgical robot, training peer supporters with simulation, visually detecting a polyp with AI, or communicating at shift report, human-machine interfaces are rapidly evolving. Competitive advantage in health will require preparing our people, adopting technology with controls, but paying needed attention to the human-machine interface. Will we drive high resilience and reliability or an unintended deus ex machina?
Vikram Kashyap, MD. Endowed Chair, Frederik Meijer Heart and Vascular Institute; Vice President of Cardiovascular Health at Corewell Health (Grand Rapids and Southfield, Mich.): Tracking quality, in a real-time and actionable manner, remains elusive for many institutions. We are doing this with multiple dashboards and registry data, but it remains time-intensive and less than seamless. Getting to the best long-term outcomes with minimal harm is a key goal that we should all focus on.
Rebecca Napier. Vice President of Finance and Administration at The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center (Albuquerque): The greatest untapped innovation in healthcare isn’t a new drug or device — it’s how we organize people. We talk endlessly about shortages of nurses, physicians, and allied staff, but the deeper challenge is that our care models haven’t evolved to meet today’s needs. The real trend to watch is workforce redesign: expanding the roles of nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and community health workers, while using AI-enabled tools to take unnecessary burden off clinicians and give patients faster, easier access to care.
This isn’t a temporary fix — it’s a fundamental evolution in how care is delivered. By embracing new models, we can create a system that is more team-based, more accessible, and more sustainable. Most importantly, it allows clinicians to do what they do best — care for patients — while building trust and connection at the heart of healthcare.
Tracea R. Saraliev. Board Member of PIH Health; Board Member of Dominican Hospital Santa Cruz (Calif.): The growing trend of cross-functional leadership in healthcare is very under-appreciated today. Cross-functional leadership involves tapping talent from a breadth of educational, functional and industry experience to work collaboratively. As a leader and executive that has experience across a breadth of industries, I believe healthcare is and continues to be the most increasingly complex industry. The demand for innovative solutions to reduce burgeoning costs and create sustainability require the expertise of all professions including JDs, MBAs, MHSIs, MDs, and RNs (to name a few). Bringing together cross-functional leaders with legal, business, IT, and clinical intellect ultimately will lead to better patient outcomes. We can no longer work in silos, and must find ways to work together to improve healthcare.
Juan Guzman. COO of Indiana University Health (Indianapolis): One of the more unappreciated trends in healthcare today is the vision and expectation that the hospital exists to solve all of our patients’ problems, not just those which are medical. Our patients have certainly increased in medical-complexity, but more challengingly – in social-complexity. This puts pressure on the hospital to think about the continuum of care for the patient holistically in order to function more as a conduit for resources outside of our four walls. This is resource intensive – people, time and financially – in a time where we are resource constrained. A large proportion of our patients enter our care via the Emergency Department, and we have equipped our department with social work and case management support, but that is too late for our patients. The work needs to occur upstream. How do we navigate social complexity in an aging patient population when the medical-complexity is already demanding enough and our patients are expecting us to deliver on more than just their medical care?
Heather Resseger, DNP, RN. Senior Vice President, Chief Hospital Operations Officer and Chief Nursing Officer of NorthBay Health (Fairfield, Calif.): I believe leadership development often shifts in and out of focus within healthcare and organizational priorities. However, many top-performing organizations consistently prioritize their leaders and ensure they are continually developing their teams. This commitment translates into improved employee engagement, as well as better patient outcomes and experiences. Establishing a dedicated development program for both staff and leaders fosters a culture of trust while keeping teams up to date on the latest research and technology. The ultimate goal is to build a best-in-class organization, and achieving that requires an engaged workforce where meaningful investment is made in both the individual and the organization through ongoing development.
Ericka Powell, MD. Vice President of Medical Affairs at WellSpan Ephrata (Pa.) Community Hospital: Empathy-driven patient care is a healthcare approach that prioritizes compassion, emotional connection, and personalized attention alongside clinical excellence. It goes beyond treating symptoms — focusing instead on understanding each patient’s experience, values, and needs. Mastering consumer centric value metrics will drive revenue over the next decade.
A powerful example of this is the integration of hospitality principles into clinical settings. Personalized menus, concierge-style services, and ambient comfort are being used to rebuild trust and enhance healing. This rare but impactful blend of high-tech and high-touch care is reshaping how patients feel seen, heard, and cared for.
Sandra Scott, MD. CEO of One Brooklyn Health (New York): An underappreciated trend in healthcare is the growing impact of the aging population and how healthcare is delivered to them. As longevity increases, more complex health needs emerge, making traditional models of care less effective. We must accelerate the shift towards integrated, community-based, and home-centered approaches that meet older adults where they are. This requires strategic investment in workforce, technology, and infrastructure that support aging with dignity and independence. It’s not just a demographic shift; it’s a call to dramatically redesign the care continuum.
Mila Sprouse, EdD, MSN, RN. Chief Nursing Officer of North Puget Sound Region at Providence (Renton, Wash.): Senior executives are rightly focused on regulatory headwinds, technology, and AI. But the underappreciated risk is normalized deviance — when unsafe shortcuts quietly become the norm. Preventing this takes more than removing blame; it requires the balance of Just Culture, accountability, and the courage to act. Without that courage, unsafe habits take root. Leaders disrupt normalized deviance by modeling transparency, reinforcing standards, and protecting trust.
Kayce Degenhardt. Vice President of IT Clinical Applications at Inova Health System (Fairfax, Va.): One of the most underrated trends in healthcare is the growing demand for easy access, just like in many other industries. Patients expect self scheduling, remote monitoring, and telehealth to be integrated seamlessly into their care, not treated as optional add ons. Health systems that embrace simple, intuitive access will strengthen trust, improve outcomes, and set the standard for what modern healthcare should be.
Paul Casey, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Rush University System for Health (Chicago): One concerning and perhaps underappreciated trend that will have a seismic impact on our health systems in the years ahead is the demographic shift we are witnessing across the country. Every day, we have approximately 10,000 new beneficiaries in the United States reaching Medicare eligibility. By the end of the decade, that means we will have roughly 80 million Americans on Medicare from around 64 million today. While the shift may seem very gradual and manageable, it will dramatically change healthcare economics and put even more pressure on health systems from a revenue and capacity perspective.
Sharda Udassi, MD. Associate Chief Quality Officer of WVU Health System (Morgantown, W.Va.): Several critical but underrecognized trends in healthcare require deeper focus if we are to achieve sustainable, high-quality, and patient-centered care in the United States.
1. Prevention and Upstream Care: One of the most significant gaps is the persistent underinvestment in preventive healthcare and community-based lifestyle initiatives. Many peer nations have demonstrated that prioritizing prevention, health promotion, and primary care yields superior outcomes at lower cost. In contrast, the U.S. system — driven largely by payer structures — continues to emphasize acute and chronic disease management. This imbalance consumes greater resources without translating into improved outcomes or longer life expectancy and is a key factor behind why U.S. healthcare remains the most expensive globally while failing to deliver proportional benefits.
2. Community-Based and Long-Term Care Resources: Another underappreciated area is the shortage of accessible healthcare resources outside the hospital, including rehabilitation services, long-term care facilities, palliative and end-of-life care, and home health staffing. These deficits are especially pronounced for pediatric and young adult populations. Limited availability in these domains often leads to prolonged, high-cost hospitalizations, inefficient patient flow. This puts pressure on healthcare administrators for unnecessary expansion of inpatient capacity—an avoidable strain on both patients and health systems.
3. Quality Improvement Metrics and Unintended Consequences: While Quality Improvement (QI) initiatives are essential, their application is sometimes misdirected. Too often, QI metrics become high-cost check-box exercises or competitive tools aimed at achieving “top rankings,” rather than instruments for meaningful, sustained improvement. Each year there can be only the top 1 healthcare organization and even that is not consistent. Furthermore, the absence of balancing measures can create perverse incentives. For example, efforts to reduce readmissions may prompt clinicians to keep patients hospitalized longer than necessary, while attempts to limit emergency department visits can lower the threshold for inpatient admissions. These practices, though improving reported metrics, increase costs without reliably enhancing safety or quality. Greater accountability and refinement of QI measures are urgently needed to avoid such unintended outcomes.
4. Patient Experience Scoring System and Expectations: Finally, patient experience must be measured and improved thoughtfully. While patient perspectives are essential, satisfaction scores can sometimes reflect unrealistic expectations shaped by social media or consumerist pressures. Demands for unnecessary lab or diagnostic testing or prescriptions like antibiotics may boost satisfaction in the short term but undermine safety, stewardship, and cost efficiency. The challenge lies in ensuring that positive patient experiences align with evidence-based, high-value care rather than with inappropriate utilization.
Tiffany Love, PhD. Associate Vice President of Nursing at Greater Lawrence Family Health Center (Lawrence, Mass.): Community Health Workers (CHWs) and Peer Support Networks are an underappreciated group of healthcare workers.
Why it matters: These non-clinical roles improve access, education, and adherence for underserved populations at lower cost.
Why it’s underappreciated: They’re often overlooked in favor of high-tech interventions, despite their cost-effectiveness and cultural relevance.
Edward Kim, MD. Vice Physician-in-Chief of City of Hope (Duarte, Calif.); Physician-in-Chief of City of Hope Orange County: Some of the most underappreciated trends in health care are directly impacting cancer research and treatments. We are making incredible strides in developing precision oncology, targeting previously “undruggable” tumor mutations, decentralizing clinical trials, and leveraging AI-driven innovations that personalize everything from prevention to treatment to survival.
With one in three Americans receiving a cancer diagnosis during their lifetime, these advances are incredibly important and are redefining standards despite receiving less attention outside specialist circles. They are trends that are being accomplished in the nation’s leading cancer institutions and have broad implications for accessibility, equity, and outcomes.
Deesha K. Brown. Senior Director of Community Clinics Network Operations at UCLA Health (Los Angeles): I have served in healthcare for more than 20 years, and one constant remains: the delivery of care is incredibly dynamic, complex, and in many organizations, deeply matrixed. What makes these challenges even more significant is that healthcare is a service built on humanity—delivered to people in their most vulnerable moments. Leading in healthcare is unlike leading in any other service industry.
When I reflect on underappreciated trends, three thoughts rise to the surface:
1. The Mental Health Crisis Is Pervasive — and Systemic
Mental health needs in the U.S. have grown substantially across age groups. Recent national data show elevated rates of depression and anxiety, particularly among adolescents and young adults, and millions of Americans live with untreated mental illness. Access gaps are exacerbated by a shortage and maldistribution of behavioral health clinicians, reimbursement and coverage barriers, and persistent stigma that keeps people — patients and clinicians alike — from seeking the help they need and desire. While Mental Health First Aid is growing in popularity as a training resource to assist with providing an immediate support response until professional help can be obtained-more is needed. The greater response is to normalize the need and integrate mental health into primary care. Otherwise, the demand for behavioral health will continue to outpace capacity with consequences for morbidity, productivity, and escalated healthcare costs.
2. Physician Fatigue and the Primary Care Decline
Physicians — especially those in primary care — continue to experience high levels of professional stress and burnout. Primary care clinicians often face the dual pressures of increasing clinical complexity and schedules driven by demand which far exceeds supply. National workforce projections estimate substantial physician shortfalls over the coming decade, with primary care particularly vulnerable. The result: worsening access, fragmented chronic disease management, and higher downstream costs. Primary Care is the backbone of our healthcare system, and an adequate response is imperative. Addressing this issue requires rethinking compensation, practice design (team-based care and appropriate use of advanced practice clinicians), and educational pipelines so primary care remains a viable, valued career.
3. Valuing People — The True Engine of Patient-Centered Care
Finally, every healthcare system across this country has a mission statement that is critically acclaimed to reach an unparalleled level of achievement. Too often, mission statements do the heavy lifting rhetorically while the daily experience of frontline staff falls short of those values. National surveys show that a large share of health workers report frequent burnout and worsening workplace stressors. Human connection — among teams and with patients — is not a “nice to have”; it is a measurable driver of care, quality, safety (psychological and physical), retention, and patient experience. However, the most underappreciated truth is that no mission statement—no matter how beautifully written—can substitute for valuing people. Healthcare is human centered at its core. Leaders and organizations that fail to invest in their people, to foster collaboration, and to embrace team-based care will struggle to achieve true patient-centered excellence. Mission statements come alive only when the people who deliver care feel supported, connected, and aligned with purpose. Leaders who operationalize respect, psychological safety, collaborative governance, and workforce development will see gains in both staff well-being and organizational performance.
Closing Thought: The future of healthcare depends not only on technological advancements or single innovations, but on how well systems integrate mental health, protect and sustain our workforce, and put human capital at the center of strategy. These trends may not capture headlines every day, but they will shape the resilience, accessibility, and humanity of healthcare for decades to come.
Frances Kelly, PhD, MSN. Assistant Chief Nursing Officer of USA Health, Children’s and Women’s Hospital (Mobile, Ala.): Modern healthcare organizations can be mazes of potentially hazardous complexity, not only for the people who work within them but especially for the patients and families that struggle to navigate through it. Never before has the patient and family experience mattered so much given the number of choices patients and their families have in deciding where to receive their care and the financial impact low patient experience scores can have on an organization’s bottom line. The focus on the patient and family experience is the obvious part. The less obvious and very underappreciated part is the impact of employee experience on patient experience. Decades ago, Harvard conducted research that demonstrated internal customer service excellence must be achieved before it was possible to achieve sustained external customer service excellence. Employee engagement impacts internal customer service excellence. According to a 2024 Gallop report employee engagement is 31%, a 10-year low. It is extremely important to focus on measuring and improving employee engagement by creating opportunities for employees to draw clear lines between their work and overarching organizational goals; communicating clearly and transparently, even when the message is hard; recognizing individual contributions and finding ways to help team members grow and develop; and fostering a sense of ownership by allowing team members to solve problems in safe and supportive environments.
Ramin Davidoff, MD. Co-CEO of The Permanente Federation; Executive Medical Director and Board Chair of Southern California Permanente Medical Group (Pasadena); Board Chair and CEO of The Southeast Permanente Medical Group; Board Chair and CEO of Hawaii Permanente Medical Group: “Investments to improve care quality. Investments in research, analytics and innovation have enabled Kaiser Permanente to go from research to care delivery 12 times faster than other health care systems. For example, our research led to the development of an integrated colorectal cancer screening program with reminders and at-home testing kits that cut cancer deaths in half and reduce incidence by nearly one-third.
Nolan Chang, MD. Executive Vice President of Strategy, Corporate Development and Finance at The Permanente Federation (Oakland, Calif.); Medical Director of Business Management at Southern California Permanente Medical Group: “Efforts to transform the patient experience. For example, in Southern California we just implemented the Kaiser Permanente Intelligent Navigator, a system that allows patients to easily book appointments and request care by simply typing their needs in their own words instead of navigating preset options. It applies natural language processing to generate alerts for high-acuity cases and recommends appropriate care offerings. For example, if a patient is experiencing chest tightness or other severe symptoms, the tool’s clinical alert system can immediately connect the patient with a clinician for prompt assessment and appropriate care.”
Sowmya Viswanathan, MD. Chief Physician Executive of BayCare Health System (Clearwater, Fla.): As the chief physician executive of BayCare Health System, the largest academic medical center in West Central Florida, we follow trends closely. The healthcare landscape is quickly changing when it comes to transforming healthcare with responsible AI tools as well as driving efficiencies through cost optimization. Another underappreciated trend that is important to pay attention to is ensuring as a health system we are building new resilience against cyber threats. BayCare is also spending time exploring the “hospital at home” models with remote patient monitoring. We believe this will continue to evolve in the future. At BayCare, trends may come and go, however our mission remains strong to improve the health of all we serve through community-owned services that set the standard for high-quality compassionate care.
Jai P. Udassi, MD. Chief of Pediatric Cardiology, Director of Heart Center and Professor of Pediatrics at West Virginia University School of Medicine (Morgantown): 1. Insufficient Focus on Preventive Care
The U.S. healthcare system is still heavily acute treatment-driven rather than prevention-driven.
Underinvestment in prevention contributes to chronic disease burdens, avoidable hospitalizations, and rising costs.
2. Health Inequities
Social drivers (housing, education, food security, transportation, income inequality) have enormous impact on health outcomes, but policy and healthcare spending remain disproportionately focused on medical interventions.
Disparities across race, geography, and socioeconomic status continue to widen and deserve much more sustained attention.
3. Fragmentation of Care
Despite advances in EMRs, patients still experience siloed care, redundant testing, and poor care coordination between specialists, hospitals, and community resources.
More attention is needed to integrated care models and value-based systems that reduce fragmentation.
4. Healthcare Workforce Strain
Burnout, staffing shortages, and attrition among physicians, nurses, and advanced practice providers are escalating.
Workforce well-being programs and retention strategies remain underdeveloped compared to the urgency of the problem.
5. Behavioral and Mental Health Crisis
Mental health needs, especially among children, adolescents, and young adults have surged, but access to timely, affordable care is lagging.
Integration of behavioral health into primary care and specialty services is still underutilized.
William Kumprey, MD. Associate Chief Medical Officer of Emergency Medicine and Emergency Physician at ThedaCare (Neenah, Wis.): It would seem there are countless underappreciated trends in healthcare deserving of more attention. With that in mind, some key trends we have been addressing come to mind. There’s a physician shortage. It’s a nationwide challenge that provides us an opportunity to rethink workforce models, strengthen retention and more effectively integrate locum providers into our care delivery processes. There’s also the trend of rising patient volumes coupled with an aging population. These challenges again offer us an opportunity for overall improvement as they compel us to innovate, staff smarter and employ unique team-based models and more efficient use of capacity. Let’s also recognize the evolving trend of AI. Sitting on the sideline is no longer an option as tools like DAX Copilot, RapidAI and Bayesian Health are moving from pilot programs to practice – positive steps. We’re also seeing an evolution in emergency care: mental health, substance use treatment and social determinants of health are being woven directly into care workflows. That enables us to practice whole-person care at the point of crisis. These trends are signals of a transforming system. Leaders who study, embrace them and share their innovative ideas will help define the next era of health care.
Jason M. Raidbard. Executive Administrator of Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at UChicago Medicine and Biological Sciences: Amid ongoing transformation, several underrecognized forces are reshaping healthcare delivery and strategy. From workforce pressures to technology integration, and climate resilience, these trends highlight where we as leaders must focus to sustain quality, access, and innovation in the years ahead.
- Workforce Burnout and Strain: Rising clinician burnout and staffing shortages are threatening care delivery and worsening patient access.
- Data Integration Challenges: Health systems face both fragmented EHR infrastructure and an overwhelming influx of AI tools that lack integration for some health systems.
- Climate Change Pressures: Extreme weather and environmental shifts are driving new patient health risks while straining hospital facilities and capital infrastructure.
- Health span over Lifespan: Healthcare is evolving from prioritizing longevity alone to focusing on extending years of healthy, functional living, and increasing preventive care planning.
- Remote Patient Monitoring: Expanding home-based monitoring programs are enabling proactive management of chronic conditions and reducing preventable hospitalizations.
- Supply Chain Fragility: Persistent vulnerabilities in the healthcare supply chain continue to expose risks and resilience to health systems.
While these issues may receive less attention than reimbursement or regulation, they represent critical levers that will define the future strength and sustainability of healthcare in the United States.
Bryan Sisk, RN. Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Executive of Memorial Hermann Health System (Houston): Two exciting trends that I believe will help drive the future of health care are the rise of nursing data Science and nurses driving policy and governance. It is an exciting time as leaders and innovators are increasingly engaging nurses in informatics, predictive analytics, and AI model validation. In addition, more nurses serving on boards is key to influencing health policy and organizational decision-making that centers on supporting excellence in care delivery.
Donna Peters. Senior Vice President and CIO of TriHealth: Under hyped trend: Robotic Logistics
As CIOs, we’re constantly navigating financial headwinds, workforce shortages, and the pressure to do more with less. Robotic logistics is a strategic capability that warrants significantly more recognition within our digital transformation efforts. These systems optimize supply chain workflows such as delivering meds, specimens, and supplies without pulling nurses or techs away from patient care. In a time when every team member needs to work at the top of their license, automating routine tasks isn’t just smart, it’s essential. However, because it is a behind the scenes technology and not directly linked to clinical touchpoints it can be dismissed as a nice-to-have. I believe it’s a strategic lever for operational resilience, especially when budgets are tight and burnout is high.
Denise Boykin. Vice President of System and Strategic Finance at Ascension: At Ascension, we are excited to see healthcare trending towards increasing access and improving the health of communities, rather than focusing exclusively on numbers. Our organization does not define success simply by the number of hospitals. For us, it is all about the health of the communities we serve and whether we are truly improving lives, and we are constantly looking to transform our portfolio to reflect our mission and the needs of the communities we serve.”
Wanita Thorpe, MBA. Director of Administration of Hartford (Conn.) Hospital Community Health Clinics: Some of the most underappreciated trends in healthcare today are also the ones with the greatest impact on patients, especially when it comes to prevention. These innovations move care beyond the exam room or clinic and into the realities of patients’ daily lives.
Food as Medicine: We know nutrition is foundational to health, yet too often it’s an afterthought in clinical care. Food pantries embedded within clinics, partnerships with food banks, and produce voucher programs with local farms are transforming access. Without the right nutrients, patients struggle to manage prescriptions, follow-up care, and long-term health.
Community-Based Screenings: Preventive care doesn’t need to be limited to health fairs or “awareness months.” Pop-up screenings for hypertension, diabetes, and mental health in trusted community spaces—barber shops, churches, and salons, are breaking down barriers to access and reaching people where they are.
Data Infrastructure for Small Clinics: Shared access to hospital discharge information and lab results equips smaller community clinics with the visibility they need to deliver informed, continuous care. This kind of data equity can dramatically change patient outcomes.
Digital Equity: The pandemic underscored that Wi-Fi access, tablets, and digital literacy aren’t “extras”, they are healthcare essentials. Ensuring patients can navigate portals and use telehealth services is one of the most powerful steps we can take toward health equity.
These prevention-focused trends don’t always grab headlines, but they are shifting the trajectory of health. They remind us that the biggest gains in patient outcomes often come not from the latest technology or blockbuster treatment, but from making sure people have the tools, resources, and trust to live healthier lives.
Maria Ansari, MD. Co-CEO of The Permanente Federation; CEO and Executive Director of The Permanente Medical Group (Pleasanton, Calif.); President and CEO of Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group; CEO of Northwest Permanente: We often hear about the urgency of clinician burnout and the nationwide physician shortage, but one underappreciated trend is the steady, meaningful progress underway to address both. Innovations like ambient listening technology, which captures clinical notes for physician review and editing, are helping ease documentation demands, streamline workflows, and restore time for patient care — directly contributing to clinician well-being. We want technology to help our clinicians rather than add administrative burden.
At the same time, we’re seeing important steps being taken to strengthen the physician pipeline. Several medical systems, including ours, are making it more affordable for students to attend medical school. For example, the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine in Pasadena has worked to support tuition assistance for its incoming classes to reduce the student debt burden.
Although the work isn’t done yet, these efforts reflect a growing recognition that supporting clinicians — both current and future — is essential to the sustainability of our healthcare system.
Kety Duron. Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer of Phoenix Children’s: One of the most underappreciated trends in healthcare is the increased shortage of front-line technical roles within radiology, pharmacy, behavioral health, and others. This is driven by limited capacity and persistent waitlists of college programs offering two-year associate’s degrees. One solution to this industry-wide challenge is for CHRO leadership to proactively seek and build academic partnerships to expand training pipelines and accelerate entry into practice. Another trend is that roles such as surgical technicians and patient care assistants are evolving to further support team-based care models, yet we as an industry are not ready to support that model from a staffing perspective. These issues are further complicated by fragmented workforce data industry-wide, making it difficult to design timely and targeted attraction and retention strategies. At Phoenix Children’s, we are addressing these gaps by investing in early career pathways to introduce youth to healthcare careers, strengthening development for mid-level leaders and building robust workforce analytics to ensure we are prepared to meet the organization’s human capital needs.
Jeff Zakem. System Director of Community Impact and Equity at Endeavor Health (Evanston, Ill.): Partnership beyond the walls of our health systems is an underappreciated and growing trend in healthcare. We know that health is more than healthcare alone. And, with the headwinds in healthcare today (costs, affordability of insurance, growing barriers to accessing Medicaid, workforce shortages in key clinical positions to name a few), these are bigger challenges than any one organization or hospital can mitigate alone. These existential issues beg us to ask the question of ‘how might we’ bring out talents, capabilities, and resources to the table in a way, that when combined with the talents, capabilities, and resources of other likeminded local community partners, can strategically, proactively, and intentionally address the health needs of all of the members of the communities that we serve. Hospital systems across the country are forging small and meaningful partnerships to tackle gaps in access to care towards less reliance on emergency services, workforce development to inspire and support the next generation of providers from the communities we serve, and food and housing insecurity as key drivers of health outcomes.
Carol Mention. Executive Director of Critical Care Services at Cedars Sinai Medical Center (Los Angeles): Targeting administrative burden
While workforce shortages are widely recognized, a less-addressed trend is tackling the root cause of burnout and attrition: frustrating and inefficient operational processes. By using technology to eliminate repetitive, manual tasks, healthcare leaders can free up employees to work at the top of their licenses and dedicate more time to patients. Also, making sure systems that are put in place will be an advantage to the Nursing Leaders. Nursing leaders are facing burnout due to inefficient systems that add additional burden and stress.
Joe Caristi. CFO of Speare Memorial Hospital (Plymouth, N.H.): An Emerging Opportunity: Aligning Community and Academic Health Systems
One of the most underappreciated trends in healthcare today is the strengthening of partnerships between small community hospitals and larger tertiary or academic health systems.
When we talk about patient access, the conversation often focuses on an “overwhelmed” healthcare system. In reality, the situation is more nuanced: while large, urban health systems frequently operate at or near full inpatient capacity, many community hospitals — particularly critical access hospitals — are underutilized.
Forward-thinking healthcare leaders are addressing this imbalance by building deeper, more strategic relationships between large health systems and their smaller regional partners. These collaborations can optimize bed utilization across the region, improve patient access and experience, enhance quality of care, and strengthen financial performance for both parties.
This is not just a trend worth watching — it’s a strategy worth expanding.
