Perry Sham began his role as CFO of Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Memorial Medical Center just three months ago, but he’s already hit the ground running with his finance team to tackle industry headwinds.
During a recent episode of Becker’s “CFO+Revenue Cycle Podcast,” Mr. Sham outlined the dual pressures squeezing safety net hospitals in 2026.
“This is burning the candle from both ends,” Mr. Sham said to describe a healthcare landscape of rising costs on one side and looming revenue cuts on the other.
“There are natural inflationary costs that hospitals get, as does any other business, but then we also get a lot of costs imposed on us via regulation,” he said. “We need to do additional things now to get our accreditation. We have these new requirements where we need to buy new things. We have new regulations on cyber security. Even to hit our cyber security requirements, there are additional costs, and then we also have naturally increased labor costs.”
For safety-net hospitals like Niagara Falls Memorial, revenue decrease is also a concern. Mr. Sham said, in New York, changes to Essential Plan coverage could put a significant revenue stream at risk.
“We haven’t seen where [Essential Plan coverage] settled out in the governor’s budget yet,” he said. “We do have an idea of how that will land, so I don’t think we’ll lose that revenue entirely. I think it’ll probably convert to something else, but that still is going to be a reduction in revenue overall for this hospital and for a lot of safety-net hospitals in New York.
Rather than defaulting to significant cost-cutting, Mr. Sham and his finance team have leaned into growth as a primary strategy. He said his colleagues are responsible and strong stewards of the resources in front of them, with a focus on volume growth in key service areas and partnership pursuits to grow clinical capabilities and attract patients.
Among the partnerships that are central to the hospital’s strategy are a heart center that was formed with Catholic Health, Kaleida Health and Erie County Medical Center, and an oncology partnership with Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, all based in Buffalo, N.Y.
When asked what mindset CFOs need most right now, Mr. Sham said, “Grit.”
“This is a tough industry, the executives are very talented people,” he said. “They have choices, they don’t have to be here … my whole message to them is stick with it. These times won’t last forever.”
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