After a year of tightening and optimizing, health system leaders are choosing words for 2027 that point in a different direction.
“Efficiency” was the word that defined how health system CEOs talked about their organizational strategy in 2026, surfacing in turnaround plans, leadership restructurings and workforce decisions throughout the year.
Now, four health system leaders say the words guiding their organizations in 2027 signal a proactive shift — toward greater scale, reach and speed — as financial and regulatory pressures continue to mount. The words these CEOs chose — systemness, innovation, acceleration and access — reflect different strategies for getting ahead of a landscape that has grown harder to navigate on a facility-by-facility basis.
Jason Smith, MD, PhD, CEO of Louisville, Ky.-based UofL Health: Systemness.
The pressures bearing down on health systems in 2027 are not departmental problems, Dr. Smith said. They require a different kind of response.
“I think oftentimes we are challenged because we try and face those external pressures with a hospital response or a departmental response,” Dr. Smith said. “Being a little more organized and a little more sophisticated in our responses as a healthcare system is really the only way we’re going to be able to respond to the challenges facing healthcare.”
To put systemness into action, UofL Health is reorganizing its clinical operations into two large pillars, Dr. Smith said.
“We’re organizing all of our hospitals under a single organization, and then we’ll look at our ambulatory care, both from a physician office as well as our surgery centers and many of our other outpatient environments, in an ambulatory pillar,” he said, “so that we’ve got very large parts of the organization all working together to try and improve patient throughput, trying to increase our access to procedural services, and then strengthening our revenue cycle performance.”
Christopher Durovich, president and CEO of Dallas-based Children’s Health: Innovation.
At Children’s Health, every innovation decision runs through the same filter: Will this make life better for children?
For Mr. Durovich, that question is shaping a broad agenda for 2027 centered on building a more connected and accessible pediatric health system across North Texas — work that extends well beyond the system’s new Dallas campus.
“We are focused on reimagining how care is delivered,” Mr. Durovich said. “That includes using trusted data and predictive insights to help our teams make better decisions, to advance precision and genomic medicine, to extend care beyond the traditional walls of our hospitals and clinics, and to use technology responsibly to reduce administrative burden and to create more capacity for our clinical teams.”
Designing care around the evolving expectations of patients and families is equally central, Mr. Durovich said, particularly as affordability and access remain significant challenges.
“We have an opportunity to better orchestrate the care journey, to improve patient safety and to make it easier for children to receive the right care, at the right place, at the right time,” he said. “For us, innovation is not about technology for technology’s sake. It is about thoughtfully combining technology, data and human expertise to solve meaningful problems.”
Eric Dickson, MD, CEO of Worcester, Mass.-based UMass Memorial Health: Acceleration.
The word captures how UMass Memorial plans to build on an existing culture of caregiver-led improvement — this time with AI as a thought partner in daily huddles and problem-solving, Dr. Dickson said.
The goal is speed. Dr. Dickson said the technology will help the people closest to the work “generate, refine, and test ideas more quickly — accelerating practical improvements in patient experience, quality, workforce engagement, access, and financial performance.”
“Our people will continue to power the ideas,” he said. “AI will help us turn them into action.”
Gerard Colman, PhD, CEO of Louisville, Ky.-based Baptist Health: Access.
Access is the driving word for Baptist Health in 2027, with several major projects underway slated for completion within the next year, Dr. Colman said.
Among them are an 80,000-square-foot expansion to double the emergency department at Baptist Health Corbin (Ky.) and expand intensive care unit services, and an emergency department expansion at Baptist Health Floyd in New Albany, Ind., that will add 20 beds. Baptist Health is also expanding its emergency room and urgent care footprint in central Kentucky through a partnership, with a new facility expected to open in Georgetown.
“This model has supported access to high-quality care while improving affordability by helping patients avoid the higher cost of emergency services when timely, effective treatment can be provided in an urgent care setting,” Dr. Colman said.
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