Health system CEOs across the U.S. launched and expanded efforts in 2025 to improve access to care, enhance patient and provider experience and reduce costs.
Becker’s connected with five health system CEOs to learn how they plan to double down on these investments and strategies in 2026 — and which emerging areas will be top of mind in the new year.
ProMedica
Toledo, Ohio-based ProMedica prioritized patient self-scheduling through MyChart in 2025. Allowing patients to book their appointments online has reduced wait times, eliminated phone tag and given them more control over the process, President and CEO Arturo Polizzi told Becker’s.
“Healthcare is a little late to this consumerism game,” Mr. Polizzi said. “A lot of other industries are more flexible than we’ve been historically. At ProMedica, we’re trying to lean into technology and give consumers the tools they need to be more in control of their journey within our system.”
While primary care was the main focus of this tool in 2025, ProMedica plans to double down on the investment in 2026 by expanding it to more specialists as well as diagnostic, radiology and laboratory services. The system is also aiming to further streamline the registration process, allowing patients to schedule appointments online and register beforehand so they can simply walk in and receive care, Mr. Polizzi said.
St. Peter’s Health Partners and St. Joseph’s Health
A major focus in 2025 at Trinity Health New York was diversifying revenue streams toward lower-cost sites of care. The system emphasized new ambulatory clinics and other outpatient sites while deemphasizing capital-intensive investments in hospitals. It is also expanding primary care centers, orthopedic centers, ASCs and partnerships to grow outpatient cancer services, according to Steven Hanks, MD, president and CEO of Albany, N.Y.-based St. Peter’s Health Partners and Syracuse, N.Y.-based St. Joseph’s Health.
“That shift from an inpatient focus to an outpatient focus is one that’s been going on for some time, but it really started to take hold in 2025, and I think the timing could not be better,” Dr. Hanks told Becker’s. “H.R. 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is going to take quite a bit of revenue out of the healthcare system over the next several years. I think all of us are looking at our cost structure and how we maintain the high quality of services and keep them accessible to our communities, and at the same time maintain financial sustainability.”
Along with accelerating outpatient investments, Trinity Health New York also expanded its breadth of services, including home health, hospice, older adult living and physician practices, and brought orthopedics in house.
“It’s a lot of investment, but in a very broad, diversified portfolio, so that we could maintain the integration of care across the continuum and take advantage of the investments we’ve made as a system to have a highly integrated electronic health record,” Dr. Hanks said.
UC San Diego Health
In 2025, UC San Diego Health focused on stabilizing the broader healthcare region through two public initiatives, CEO Patty Maysent told Becker’s. The first is the system’s joint powers agreement to stabilize Imperial Valley — the poorest county in California — by bringing together two hospitals under the Imperial Valley Health District. In North San Diego, UCSD Health recently established a joint powers authority to stabilize the Palomar Health District, the largest health district in the state.
“Both areas are on the precipice of failing because of the impacts of federal changes in reimbursement,” Ms. Maysent said. “So how do we use our public nature and our ability to not necessarily use our balance sheet, but to use our collective scale and power to stabilize these two health districts and these two communities?”
In 2026, UC San Diego Health plans to double down by scaling clinical programs and physician pipelines to help stabilize care in these regions. At the same time, it is working to ease capacity constraints on its own academic campus by pushing more care into community settings.
“We’re so inundated with patients coming in through our emergency departments, we have to say no to those quaternary transfers for patients that only we can take care of — and that’s really the purpose of why we’re here,” she said. “So how do we decant some of the care and push it into, for instance, Palomar, or down to our Hillcrest campus, so we create more room for quaternary care?”
OSF HealthCare
Peoria, Ill.-based OSF HealthCare advanced its delivery system redesign in 2025 to address long-standing challenges across its rural and small urban communities. The 17-hospital system created regional hubs to group specialists and deliver higher-level care to broader areas, helping overcome recruitment challenges in smaller markets, CEO Bob Sehring told Becker’s.
“The way a lot of those areas have been structured to deliver care over the last 40 years is just not sustainable,” Mr. Sehring said. “You can’t recruit folks who are coming out of medical school or residency to be a solo practitioner in some of these small communities. They don’t want to be the only one — and rightly so — they want to be surrounded by a larger group of clinicians to help support the care that they all can provide.”
The hubs support more robust ICU services and allow OSF to keep care closer to patients’ homes. The system has created three large hubs and is continuing to grow them into 2026. These hubs are connected to OSF’s Destination Center — through its flagship hospital OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria — and its OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois and cardiovascular, neurological and cancer institutes.
“You can think of it as concentric circles — the destination center, then the hubs, and then surrounding them with a number of other facilities that provide great care locally,” he said. “To the extent that higher acuity care is needed, we can then move them to either a hub or, if needed, down to the destination center.”
Mr. Sehring added that OSF will continue developing its hubs and institutes to strengthen recruitment and expand clinical capabilities.
Saint Francis Health System
Tulsa, Okla.-based Saint Francis Health System entered into a full-risk accountable care organization with Medicare in fiscal 2025. It was the system’s first such arrangement and has proved successful in meeting expectations around both quality and cost, President and CEO Cliff Robertson, MD, told Becker’s.
Early results include decreased utilization of inpatient rehabilitation and skilled nursing facilities, as well as more effective transitions to home health.
“We’re doing a better job at utilizing lower-cost imaging sites of care, and once you start down this path, it becomes easy to identify additional opportunities where we can take out unnecessary expenditures and make it not only better for the patient from a quality perspective, but also more cost effective,” Dr. Robertson said.
Looking ahead to 2026, Saint Francis plans to scale its remote patient monitoring initiative and begin managing chronically ill patients remotely after the new year.
“As you get under the umbrella of managing total cost of care and having the incentive to do that effectively, things like investing in remote patient monitoring capabilities and alternate-site infusion make great financial sense,” Dr. Robertson said.
Emerging areas for 2026
As CEOs and their organizations continue these initiatives, nearly all pointed to artificial intelligence as a key focus area for 2026.
In the first quarter of 2026, ProMedica plans to install ambient voice technology in its physician practices. The AI tool offers several benefits to physicians: less typing, more eye contact and better patient connections, along with accurate, real-time notetaking to reduce after-hours documentation and burnout. Patients also benefit from increased eye contact, improved accuracy and more efficient visits, Mr. Polizzi said.
“From a health system perspective, it reduces administrative costs,” he said. “Automating anything you can automate in our complex environment is really great.”
Mr. Polizzi also highlighted the scalability of the technology and its potential for expansion across ProMedica’s 1,300-provider physician group.
“The strategies we’re working on are really positioning ourselves to be forward-looking, patient- centered, and making sure people understand we’re investing in technology not only to make things more efficient, but more human and consumer-friendly,” he said.
In 2026, Dr. Hanks expects continued returns from technologies that support clinical work at Trinity Health New York, including plans to roll out Epic’s artificial intelligence capabilities. The system has already implemented ambient listening tools to reduce documentation burden, which he said has decreased “pajama time,” improved productivity and allowed physicians to see more patients. Next steps include evaluating the use of such tools among other practitioners, including nurses and therapists.
“We’re also seeing deployment of our AI technologies with some of the back-office functions to help us with things like revenue cycle and denials management, which is also saving enormous amounts of time,” he said.
Dr. Hanks expects the trend to expand in 2026 and beyond.
“Long term, though, the real play for AI is going to be select use cases that tie to our integrated health record to give us insights into providing better care to individual patients and populations,” he said. “That’s where it’s going; although that potential won’t be fully realized in 2026, it’s not that far away.”
UC San Diego Health recently finalized a contract to use ambient scribing for clinical notetaking, which Ms. Maysent said will improve clinician wellness and reduce burnout.
“There are areas that we’re going to leverage AI to drive efficiencies, which is going to help us from a financial standpoint,” she said. “We think it’s going to improve patient experience, but we also think it’s going to improve the wellness and the experience of our nurses and our physicians as we leverage it to make the way they deliver care more efficient for them.”
OSF HealthCare is also exploring AI investments in 2026, coinciding with a significant leadership transition at the system. Michelle Conger became president of OSF HealthCare in January and will become CEO in April when Mr. Sehring retires. He sees AI and technology as central priorities for 2026 and said Ms. Conger’s experience — including her role as chief strategy officer and oversight of OSF’s digital and innovation strategies — gives her the “perfect set of skills to lead this change.”
“What I see as the next frontier for healthcare is, how do we use AI in the best of cases, in the best ways?” Mr. Sehring said.
Current examples include ambient listening during patient visits in OSF’s medical group offices, allowing clinicians to focus more on patients than on documentation, and real-time support during colonoscopies to highlight potential areas of concern.
“There’s a myriad of others where I think AI will be incredibly important,” Mr. Sehring said. “And I do think that Michelle, as the CEO for this organization in April and beyond, will help lead that effort.”
