Health system C-suites across the U.S. are targeting ambulatory care expansion for 2026 as pressure mounts to lower cost of care and deliver on value-based promises.
Even the nation’s largest health systems are strengthening their ambulatory footprints. Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, which operates in 28 states, is focused on outpatient growth.
“Our best growth opportunities are in our ambulatory footprint and enhancing our patient care access,” said Shelly Schorer, CFO of the California Division of CommonSpirit Health, which already includes 125 ambulatory sites. “There’s still a need for the acute care setting, but we are seeing more and more services and healthcare procedures moving to the outpatient setting and I think we need to expand our ambulatory care footprint.”
That ambulatory footprint includes outpatient clinics, surgery centers and urgent care facilities as well as digital health and telehealth for multiple convenient access points. Patient experience and satisfaction with their care journey has become increasingly important to hospitals and health systems as they’re competing with traditional and nontraditional care delivery sources.
“We are not only serving our communities better, but we’re positioning CommonSpirit for sustainable growth in a rapidly evolving healthcare landscape,” she said. “I think that’s where you’re going to see us really succeed in the next year or two.”
Expanding outpatient centers and telehealth can create more local access points for care delivery, but it’s expensive to build. Outpatient service and virtual care are also reimbursed at a lower rate than inpatient services, challenging the balance sheet. C-suite executives are carefully identifying the right transformational vision to provide the best quality of care for their patients with minimal disruption to financial sustainability.
“If we start investing in ambulatory care, yes it’s a lower overhead, but it’s also lower reimbursement,” said Ms. Schorer. “We have to make sure that we don’t over-invest in our acute care. We have to balance that setting. If we’re getting it right in the acute care setting, that’s fine, but if we start to see a shift to outpatient, then we have to adjust our overhead and our support for the acute care setting. It’s all about balance and making sure that we are where we need to be.”
That balance is critical for CFOs and strategic leaders to keep top of mind as they’re planning for the future. Ms. Schorer also cautioned that health systems can’t invest in everything at the same time; they need to divert resources into the spaces most beneficial for patients and the system as a whole.
“When we start to expand our ambulatory care footprint, or our urgent care, then we have to look at whether there are other acute care settings that we need to come up with a partner for to fill that space,” she said. “It’s really about constantly having those conversations and managing how we care for our patients and looking ahead, because there is a need for the acute care space. But we can’t sustain everything and still grow in our ambulatory care setting. We have to start to adjust our focus and our spending to make sure that it still makes sense for the communities we serve.”
