All Featured Insights

The financial challenges facing hospitals and health systems—from the One Big Beautiful Bill’s looming impacts to difficult operating conditions—are also keeping insurers up at night.

By effectively putting strategy into action, hospitals and healthcare systems can thrive amid today’s financial and operational challenges and position themselves to confront the looming threats that are just around the corner.

Healthcare leaders are laser-focused on understanding how the future financial trajectory of their organizations might take shape post-OBBB—and what they can do to guide their organizations to long-term sustainability.

Forward-looking healthcare systems aren’t waiting for conditions to stabilize. They are moving deliberately toward strategic partnerships that position them for long-term relevance and resilience.

The challenges that hospitals and health systems currently face are amplifying this complexity, from uncertainty about potential changes to federal healthcare policy—including Medicaid and NIH funding cuts and tariffs—inflation, and ongoing workforce challenges.

A unique rural-academic partnership has enabled a critical access hospital to significantly expand access to services. At the same time, careful financial planning has supported debt issuance for a state-of-the-art facility for the community.

Hospitals continue to lose significant money on employing physicians, and the original goals of care coordination and efficiency haven't materialized. Rising costs, declining reimbursement advantages, overutilization of low-margin services and administrative burdens are factors behind these unsustainable losses.

The hospital and health system leaders we work with are extremely concerned about the financial impact their organizations may experience from potentially significant Medicaid policy changes, following the recent passage of a budget resolution by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Senior living mergers and acquisitions involving not-for-profit entities continued to rise in 2024, with 62 announced transactions—up from 59 in 2023—according to a new analysis by Kaufman Hall, a Vizient company.

A conversation with Rich Liekweg, CEO of BJC Health System in Missouri, and Nick Barto, president of BJC Health System

The latest Kaufman Hall Report includes highlights from the 35th annual Healthcare Leadership Conference, which featured high-level thinking and reflection on how our industry’s ongoing transformation will progress into the future.

It has been an incredibly busy and exciting year for our Strategy & Business Transformation practice at Kaufman Hall. In 2024, we observed hospitals and health systems take steps to reinvigorate their strategic efforts amid a stabilizing, but still challenging, outlook.