Jim Molloy, executive vice president, CFO and treasurer of New Orleans-based Ochsner Health, has highlighted the “fundamental imbalance” between payment versus expenses in healthcare as systems navigate a challenging financial landscape in 2026.
“The governmental payers are not keeping up with inflation generally in any of the categories,” Mr. Molloy said during an episode of Becker’s “CFO + Revenue Cycle Podcast.” “Because of provider shortages and different things that we are experiencing in the industry, our expenses are going up, even more so than regular inflation throughout the economy. We have to deal with that, when the increases that we’re seeing on the revenue side aren’t there. Fundamentally, that’s OK. It just causes a focus on change, and we need to get more efficient. The most recent difference is that the commercial payments haven’t been keeping up either with that expense inflation that we’re having.”
Mr. Molloy joined the 47-hospital system in 2023 after spending the majority of his career in consulting and banking. While he noted getting up to speed on healthcare information over the last three years has been a bit like “drinking from a fire hose,” his fresh perspective to the industry has been useful in this role.
The growing government program dependence has also become particularly apparent to Mr. Molloy, who noted that an aging population is driving more patients into Medicare while regulatory risks loom over programs such as Medicaid and 340B.
“You realize how important those things are from a different perspective, and that’s probably been the most intriguing of the things to me,” he said.
Despite policy initiatives such as the Rural Health Transformation Program, which Mr. Molloy is keeping an eye on, he expressed skepticism over legislative fix-all solutions.
“There is nothing out there that’s going to offset trends that have not been that positive on the legislative side,” he said. “Although we’re keeping up to date on all those things and looking at them on a daily and monthly basis, there’s nothing out there that we’re really counting on to have an impact.”
From a growth perspective, Mr. Molloy said Ochsner remains focused on integration after it doubled in size over a short period of time. Most systems’ recent growth has been organic, and Mr. Molloy said its acquisition pause would likely remain throughout 2026.
“Unless something unusual or a phenomenal opportunity comes up, we’ll probably be in that mode the rest of 2026,” Mr. Molloy said. “After that, I think we’ll probably return to looking for whatever great opportunities are out there.”
Looking toward the future, Mr. Molloy said Ochsner is turning inward to drive improvement amid times of industry uncertainty. He emphasized positivity and highlighted two areas of focus: access and experience.
“It’s easy to be negative, but I think there is so much opportunity out there, almost unlimited,” he said. “There are tremendous inefficiencies in the industry; we have a lot of opportunities to get after those, both from our own internal perspective and from an advocacy perspective.”
