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Health systems are faced with two conflicting realities. The first is that partnerships will continue to be a necessary and critical part of healthcare strategy. The second is that antitrust enforcement will continue to create strong barriers to these same partnerships.

After several years of grappling with one existential challenge after another, many organizations may find the task of resetting their strategy overwhelming. In our experience, most health systems have not asked or answered the difficult questions required to chart a new path.

Following the US Senate Finance Committee’s recent white paper on Medicare physician payment reform, the graphic shows how Medicare payments to physicians have not kept pace with inflation.

Ozempic trial shows the drug slows kidney disease progression, a blood-based colorectal cancer test is endorsed for FDA approval, and nursing home trade groups sue over the new staffing mandate.

In recent years, the Medicare Advantage (MA) program enjoyed both rapid membership growth and positive attention from healthcare organizations and advocates. As of the beginning of 2024, 33.4 million Americans were enrolled in MA, up 7% from 2023.

Walmart’s failure as a healthcare provider points to some big problems in U.S. healthcare, including a difficult business model, an unfriendly reimbursement model, and a basic healthcare expense-to-revenue problem.

The many forces driving some hospitals to financial distress make it impossible to maintain the status quo. Leaders can move beyond a binary close-or-don’t-close decision to reconsider what it means to deliver healthcare in communities that struggle to support a hospital.

With Walmart’s announcement last week that it plans to shutter its Walmart Health business, this week’s graphic takes stock of the company’s healthcare delivery journey over nearly the past two decades.

Steward Health Care files for bankruptcy and plans to sell its hospitals, and Florida sues the Biden administration over a new healthcare anti-discrimination rule.

With hundreds of competing priorities, hospital executive teams must focus on something they that they know they can spend time on and get real results from. An intense focus on improving length of stay gives hospitals a significant advantage in financial performance.

The employed physician model is coming under stress at many health systems. Given the growing financial pressures that health systems face, they must rethink how they are deploying scarce financial resources and physician talent across the enterprise.

The moral issues coming at executives today are increasing exponentially in complexity, frequency, and intensity. Literature can help cultivate a practice of judicious thought that is as sophisticated as these issues demand.