The complexity inside hospitals is accelerating. Health systems are managing higher-acuity patients, profound workforce shortages, shifting demographics, rising costs, and rapid technological change — often simultaneously. In this environment, healthcare leaders are being forced to re-examine longstanding assumptions about what truly drives performance and outcomes, and what quietly holds them back.
One emerging insight is impossible to ignore: support services are no longer peripheral. They are foundational to a hospital’s ability to deliver safe, efficient, high-quality care.
For decades, these functions — food and nutrition, environmental, patient transport, and healthcare technology management services — were viewed as operational requirements. Keep the rooms clean. Keep patients fed. Keep the equipment running. But today, they influence far more than day-to-day workflow. They shape capacity, regulatory readiness, infection prevention, staff satisfaction, patient experience, and financial sustainability.
The connection is clear. A five-minute improvement in room turnover expands access. Reliable equipment uptime reduces clinical risk. Better food quality improves nutrition compliance and perception of care. When support services perform well, the entire system performs better. When they don’t, the ripple effects are immediate and costly.
This shift is redefining what hospitals expect from their partners. Health systems do not need more vendors. They need collaborators who understand the realities inside their walls, anticipate emerging challenges, and share accountability for outcomes that extend far beyond any single service line.
At Compass Healthcare, this evolution mirrors what our teams have experienced for almost 100 years collectively, working side-by-side with clinical team and healthcare operators. Being “at home in healthcare” isn’t a tagline, it’s the lived reality of people who understand the cadence of a hospital day, the stakes behind every handoff, and the operational frictions that quietly impede performance.
It’s also why our recent transition from Compass One Healthcare to Compass Healthcare reflects something deeper than a name change. As support services become more integral to systemwide goals, our structure matches the complexity hospitals face. Bringing our specialized sectors — Morrison Healthcare, Crothall Healthcare, Intelas, TouchPoint Support Services, and Unidine Healthcare — under one purpose-driven brand, rooted in shared values that our teams bring to life every day, provides clarity and coordination at a time when health systems are seeking both.
Health system leaders consistently tell us the same thing: they don’t need a collection of disconnected services. They need an integrated partner that can connect the dots across nutrition, environmental services, technology management, patient observation and transport, and more because that’s how problems actually get solved inside a hospital.
The value isn’t in the uniform; it’s in the integration. It’s in the ability to pair human insight with data to address issues before they become disruptions. It’s in anticipating regulatory shifts, workforce challenges, and patient needs and preparing systems accordingly.
The next generation of healthcare leadership will view these functions not as cost centers, but as catalysts for resilience and performance. The organizations that thrive will be those that treat support services as strategic assets and choose partners capable of elevating them.
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Now is the moment to take a fresh, unfiltered look at the operational backbone of your organization. Ask whether support services are positioned — structurally, strategically, and culturally — to help you meet today’s demands and tomorrow’s uncertainties. Evaluate whether your partners are merely executing tasks or contributing to outcomes. And consider how an integrated, insight-driven approach could unlock performance gains that traditional operating models simply cannot achieve.
Support services are no longer behind the scenes. They are a strategic frontier and the health systems that recognize their potential now will be the ones best equipped to deliver resilient, high-performing care in the years ahead.
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Jeff Moser, SVP Partner Strategy
Compass Healthcare
Jeff Moser is a healthcare industry veteran, with 30 years of healthcare experience in strategic planning, process improvement, operational effectiveness and organizational change. Compass Healthcare is a leading provider of support services to the healthcare industry, unifying the specialized expertise of Crothall Healthcare, Intelas, Morrison Healthcare, TouchPoint Support Services, and Unidine Healthcare. With its collective 100 years of experience, Compass Healthcare is at home in healthcare, partnering with healthcare organizations nationwide to deliver safer, more seamless care through innovative, integrated, and transformational support services.
