New research from Advisory Board, conducted in partnership with Staples Business, reveals how 102 health system supply chain and executive leaders are navigating rising costs, quality expectations and supply chain resilience.
Healthcare procurement is under increasing strain as financial pressure collides with growing operational demands. To understand how leaders are responding, Advisory Board conducted a survey as part of its 2026 State of Healthcare Procurement research. The findings show procurement taking on a more strategic role, with decisions shaped by reliability, scale, and long-term viability beyond short-term cost considerations.
Top procurement challenges and objectives
Rising costs rank as the top challenge procurement leaders expect in the year ahead, driven by ongoing tariff uncertainty, margin pressure, and the risk of funding cuts. In response, leaders are moving beyond blunt cost-cutting toward more deliberate strategies that protect operational performance while maintaining financial discipline. They’re focusing on reliable products, greater standardization, stronger supply chain resilience, and better inventory management to reduce waste and variability.
Top five trends shaping healthcare procurement:
1. Balancing margin pressure with imperatives to maintain quality for patients and staff
Despite ongoing margin pressure, procurement leaders continue treating quality as nonnegotiable. As organizations make tough purchasing decisions, leaders are setting clear guardrails to protect patient outcomes and staff experience. More than half of respondents (52%) rank ensuring product quality among their top supply chain objectives, underscoring that financial discipline cannot come at the expense of reliability or performance.
2. Standardizing purchasing processes is just as important as standardizing vendors and SKUs
Health systems have captured many early gains from vendor and SKU consolidation, but leaders now see process standardization as the next opportunity for impact. Even highly disciplined organizations report variation purchasing across sites, departments, and categories, limiting savings and visibility. In fact, 62% of respondents cite controlling rogue spend as a top challenge, reinforcing that consistent purchasing workflows matter just much as which vendors or products are under contract.
3. Resilience efforts focus primarily on internal optimization
Rather than relying solely on supplier diversification, health systems are strengthening supply chain resilience by tightening internal operations. Leaders are investing in better forecasting, analytics, and inventory discipline, with 36% prioritizing supply chain reliability when selecting partners. These internally focused efforts help organizations improve preparedness and continuity without materially increasing costs.
4. Environmental sustainability must be paired with financial sustainability
Environmental sustainability remains a priority for procurement leaders, but only when it supports financial performance. As margin pressure intensifies, organizations are moving away from stand-alone sustainability initiatives and toward efforts that reduce waste, improve efficiency, and lower total cost of ownership. Leaders increasingly view sustainability as most effective when it aligns with core supply chain goals, reinforcing that environmental progress must also deliver operational and financial value.
5. Early AI adoption in procurement focuses on low-risk use cases
Health systems are approaching AI adoption in procurement cautiously, focusing first on low-risk, high-value use cases over broad transformation. Early applications include inventory management and product or vendor identification that rely on accessible data and limit operational risk. This measured approach allows organizations to build confidence, strengthen data foundations, and demonstrate value before expanding AI’s role in more complex purchasing decisions.
Read the full 2026 State of Healthcare Procurement report, Cost, Quality and Resilience, to explore the research and see how healthcare leaders are addressing their biggest supply chain challenges.
