The next era of healthcare strategy will be won in the details

If day 1 of the Vizient Executive Strategy Summit focused on building the institutional strength to navigate change, day 2 focused on where that strength should be applied.

The conversations moved across topics including payer mix, artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals, primary care, pediatrics, behavioral health, patient experience, and alternative care models. The sessions also were connected by a common warning: Broad strategic statements are becoming less useful in a market defined by local variation, uneven readiness, and increasingly specific consumer expectations.

The big takeaway: Leaders must know which patients, markets, use cases, therapies, and operating capabilities should command their attention. In an increasingly complex market, precision is becoming one of healthcare’s most important strategic capabilities.

Figure 1.

Note: Analysis includes U.S. market only and excludes 0-17 age group. Abd - abdominal; cath - catheterization; endo - endovascular; EP - electrophysiology; ICD - implantable cardioverter defibrillator; IP - inpatient; OP - outpatient; PCI - percutaneous coronary intervention; PLAAC - percutaneous left atrial appendage closure; thor - thoracic. Ablations refers to intracardiac catheter ablations. Sources: Vespa J., Medina L., Armstrong DM. Demographic turning points for the United States: Population Projections for 2020 to 2060. U.S. Census Bureau. February 2020. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2020/demo/p25-1144.pdf; Impact of Change®, 2026; HCUPNationalInpatient Sample (NIS). Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) 2022. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD; Proprietary Strategy Intelligence ClaimsDataSet, 2023; The following 2023 CMS Limited Data Sets (LDS): Carrier, Denominator, Home Health Agency, Hospise, Outpatient, Skilled Nursing Facility; Claritas Pop-Facts®, 2026; Strategy Intelligence analysis, 2026.

Smarter growth starts with better visibility

Patients are moving among traditional providers, virtual platforms, retailers, independent practices, and direct-to-consumer companies, often in ways that are difficult to see through conventional utilization and referral data. A service line may appear stable while portions of the patient journey are quietly shifting elsewhere.

That makes market intelligence increasingly important. Organizations need to understand not only how much demand exists, but where it’s emerging, which populations are generating it, how consumers prefer to access care, and whether the current operating model can capture it. Growth strategies built around broad market assumptions may overlook meaningful differences among neighborhoods, patient segments, sites of care, and service lines.

The cardiovascular outlook illustrates why that level of specificity matters. Vizient forecasts show significant variation across procedures from 2026 to 2036: diagnostic catheterization volume is projected to decline 19%, while ablations could grow 51%, left atrial appendage closure 107%, and transcatheter valve procedures 143%. Those shifts will not place equal pressure on every part of the system, but they may create bottlenecks in certain labs, facilities, and referral pathways even as demand softens elsewhere. Smarter growth planning requires understanding which procedures are growing, where they should be delivered, and what capacity will be needed to support them.

The more precisely organizations can identify those differences, the more they’ll be to direct capital, workforce, and access investments toward areas of sustainable opportunity.

Why it matters for healthcare

• Enterprise growth projections can conceal significant variation among markets, populations, and service lines.
• Demand may migrate outside the organization before the loss becomes visible in traditional performance data.
• Growth without sufficient access, workforce capacity, or operational readiness can add pressure without creating equivalent value.
• A more granular understanding of demand can help organizations distinguish where to lead, where to partner, and where investment may not be warranted.
• Growth within a single service line can vary sharply by procedure, creating capacity constraints in some areas even as volume declines in others.

What leaders should do now

• Analyze growth opportunities by market, ZIP code, service line, site of care, and patient population.
• Combine utilization, referral, consumer, competitive, and digital data to identify demand the organization may not currently see.
• Assess whether workforce, access, facilities, and technology can support projected growth.
• Incorporate financial and operational assumptions—not only volume forecasts—into investment decisions.
• Define where the organization has a differentiated advantage and where partnership may be the stronger strategy.
• Use procedure-level forecasts to anticipate bottlenecks, align capacity with the fastest-growing services, and avoid overinvesting in areas where demand is declining.

AI’s next challenge is organizational readiness

Healthcare’s AI conversation is shifting away from whether to adopt the technology to a far more crucial question: Do organizations have the governance, data, workflow integration, workforce engagement, and measurement capabilities needed to turn promising tools into sustainable performance?

Moving too slowly carries the risk of falling behind organizations that use AI to improve productivity, access, clinical decision-making, and consumer experience. Moving too quickly introduces a different set of risks when tools are scaled without clear evidence, ownership, or alignment with the work they are meant to improve.

Not every pilot should become an enterprise platform. The more important capability is knowing which ones deserve to.

Why it matters for healthcare

• AI investment is increasing faster than many organizations’ ability to govern and operationalize it.
• A technically promising tool may still fail if it does not fit the workflow, solve a meaningful problem, or have an accountable owner.
• Poorly planned deployment can introduce clinical, financial, ethical, legal, and reputational risk.
• Repeated pilots consume time and resources when organizations lack a clear process for deciding what to scale or sunset.

What leaders should do now

• Create a clear decision process for determining which AI initiatives should move from exploration to pilot—and which pilots are ready to scale.
• Evaluate strategic relevance, data readiness, workflow fit, measurable value, technology risk, and change-management requirements.
• Assign clinical and operational owners to each use case.
• Establish decision points for scaling, revising, or discontinuing pilots.
• Evaluate the operating model around the tool, not simply the tool’s technical performance.

Figure 2.

Note: FDA = US Food and Drug Administration. Sources: Citeline. Pharma R&D 2025. Access June 2226. https://www.citeline.com/-/media/0696EC887C5543CCAD59E8B689FC1177; Center for Drug Evaluetion and Research. Advancing Health Through Innovation: New Drug Therapy Approvals 2025. January 2026. Accessed June 2026. https://www.fda.gov/media/190705/download; Strategy Intelligence analysis, 2026.

The pharmaceutical pipeline is becoming an enterprise strategy issue

The pace and breadth of pharmaceutical innovation are expanding quickly. Vizient is monitoring approximately 250 cell and gene therapies, while about half of the drug pipeline involves specialty pharmacy. At least 40 drug approvals are expected each year through 2029. Of the 46 drugs approved in 2025, 72% used an expedited FDA pathway, and half addressed common conditions affecting more than 200,000 people in the U.S.

Those numbers make the pipeline much more than a pharmacy concern. New specialty drugs, advanced therapies, and treatments for both rare and common conditions may require new clinical expertise, diagnostics, infusion capacity, outpatient infrastructure, financial navigation, care coordination, and longitudinal monitoring. They may also redirect care into different settings, change referral patterns, or replace recurring treatments with one-time interventions.

Manufacturers and direct-to-consumer platforms are also establishing relationships with patients earlier in the treatment journey. By the time a health system becomes involved, choices about information, testing, prescribing, or ongoing management may already have been made.

Preparing for that environment will require leaders to assess not only which therapies are coming, but how each one could reshape demand, infrastructure, patient access, and service-line economics.

Why it matters for healthcare

• Pharmaceutical innovation will affect capital planning, workforce strategy, access, site of care, and service-line performance.
• Advanced therapies can create significant financial and operational exposure before demand is fully understood.
• Treatments targeting common chronic conditions may affect far larger populations than the first generation of highly specialized therapies.
• Direct relationships among consumers, manufacturers, and virtual platforms can reduce health system visibility into emerging demand.

What leaders should do now

• Establish a cross-functional pipeline-planning process involving pharmacy, clinical leadership, strategy, finance, supply chain, facilities, and ambulatory operations.
• Assess the eligible population, clinical capabilities, infrastructure, workforce, economics, and access requirements for high-impact therapies.
• Determine where the organization intends to lead, participate through partnership, serve as a referral hub, or decline to invest.
• Monitor changes in route of administration and site of care that could shift volume away from current settings.
• Build patient navigation and financial support into the strategy from the outset.

Figure 3.

Note: *n=38,776. PCP=primary care provider. Source: Strategy Intelligence National Consumer Survey, 2025; Strategy Intelligence analysis, 2026.

Convenience is now part of clinical strategy

According to the 2025 Vizient Strategy Intelligence National Consumer Survey, consumers who didn’t seek traditional care over the past year were 88% more likely to use wellness coaches and 238% more likely to engage in DIY health and wellness. While many of those patients are not necessarily looking for an entirely different model of healthcare, they are looking for a simpler experience: a timely appointment, a clear next step, transparent pricing, fewer handoffs, or support beyond traditional office hours.

Established organizations may not see that shift right away, especially when it falls outside traditional claims, referral, and utilization data. By the time it surfaces, the patient relationship may already have moved elsewhere.

Convenience, therefore, is not separate from clinical strategy. It shapes whether patients can access care, remain connected, and continue their journey within the system.

Why it matters for healthcare

• Patients increasingly evaluate access, responsiveness, convenience, and personalization alongside clinical quality.
• Organizations may underestimate how much demand is moving to virtual and direct-to-consumer competitors.
• Friction in scheduling, referrals, digital access, and prescription management can push patients outside the system.
• Access barriers can compound inequities for patients managing transportation, work, caregiving, or geographic constraints.

What leaders should do now

• Map the complete patient journey for priority services, including what occurs before the patient contacts the organization.
• Identify delays, unnecessary handoffs, limited hours, unclear pricing, and digital dead ends.
• Begin with focused redesigns in areas such as primary care access, prescription management, behavioral health, specialty referrals, or oncology navigation.
• Combine claims, consumer research, digital behavior, call-center data, and patient-experience feedback to identify hidden demand.
• Treat convenience and digital access as components of clinical and market strategy, not simply consumer amenities.

Day 2 brought the work of future readiness into sharper focus. The challenge now is to identify which opportunities align with market needs, build on the organization’s strengths, and advance a better experience for patients and clinicians.

That will require more precise intelligence, more disciplined judgments about readiness, and closer coordination among strategy, finance, clinical leadership, and operations. When those groups move together, innovation has a better chance of becoming an integral to how the organization grows, adapts, and delivers care.

Vizient Strategy Intelligence connects demand forecasting, competitive visibility, and referral insights to help health systems identify opportunity, strengthen networks, and prioritize investments. See where care is moving—and where to invest next.