EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Healthcare organizations are feeling the squeeze from multiple directions.

Rising costs and liability exposures are tightening margins, workforce needs are competing with growing pressure to control spending, and shifting government priorities are creating new financial, regulatory, and operational considerations.

The pressures facing healthcare organizations are not easing, but how organizations respond is evolving. As healthcare organizations continue to manage pressures across cost, workforce, and policy, there is a greater focus on where to prioritize resources and which strategies are delivering results. Organizations are balancing the need to control costs with continued investment in their workforce and capabilities, while evaluating partnerships, affiliations, and joint ventures as ways to strengthen their position and address shared challenges.

Cost pressures are intensifying

Healthcare organizations are facing financial pressure across both sides of their business: the cost of delivering care and the cost of supporting their own workforce. Rising medical and pharmacy costs, reimbursement challenges, high-cost therapies, and escalating liability exposures are forcing organizations to take a more connected view of where costs are growing and where they can intervene.

What’s driving health plan costs for hospitals and health systems?

Explore the medical and pharmacy trends increasing benefit spend, and how domestic strategies can help organizations better leverage their own clinical assets.

How are liability risks adding to financial pressure?

Learn how large verdicts are reshaping approaches to governance, insurance, and risk management, particularly for financial sponsors of healthcare organizations.

Workforce dynamics are evolving

Healthcare organizations continue to depend on attracting and retaining skilled talent, but workforce strategy is increasingly being shaped by financial and operational realities. Leaders are balancing benefits, employee experience, staffing, and culture against cost pressures and enterprise transformation while managing workforce-related risks that can carry significant financial and reputational consequences.

Are healthcare organizations prepared for misconduct risk?

Recent sexual abuse and misconduct cases highlight the consequences of missed warning signs and the importance of stronger reporting channels, policies, training, and risk controls.

How are healthcare talent priorities changing?

Explore what employee reviews reveal about engagement, staffing, leadership, rewards, and career development, and what it means for an organization’s employee value proposition and ability to compete for talent against local competitors.

Policy dynamics are shifting

Federal and state policy decisions are increasingly shaping healthcare organizations’ revenue, costs, liability exposures, and compliance responsibilities. From tort reform and False Claims Act enforcement to reimbursement, pharmacy policy, transparency, and 340B, healthcare leaders must navigate changes that can affect them simultaneously as providers, employers, and plan sponsors.

How is the legal and enforcement environment changing?

Explore how state tort reform, shifting liability standards, and increased federal scrutiny of fraud, waste, and abuse are changing the risk and compliance environment.

What does the policy focus on healthcare affordability mean for organizations?

See how transparency, competition, pharmacy economics, reimbursement, 340B, and other policy initiatives could affect healthcare organizations as an employer and a business.