Health systems are heading into 2027 under financial pressure from several directions at once: Medicaid cuts and changes to state-directed payments under HR 1, Medicare Advantage denials and rising wages.
Spotting margin opportunities has perhaps never been easier. Between AI, analytics and benchmarking, executives can diagnose financial challenges and pinpoint possible wins more easily than ever, and none of the leaders on a recent Becker’s Healthcare advisory call held in partnership with ECG Management Consultants named identification as their constraint.
What they named instead was execution, and sustaining results long after an improvement effort ends.
This whitepaper captures how health system executives are turning margin improvement into an ongoing operating discipline.
Learnings include:
- How to build governance for hundreds of small savings projects rather than a few big ones
- How a West Coast academic medical center’s “save the day” incentive helped it finish 10% above its savings target
- Why leaders say financial literacy and trusted data are what make improvement plans stick
- The capabilities executives expect to separate health systems over the next two to three years
