January 22, 2026 – Rising prices, altering demographics, evolving partnership traits and accelerating innovation are quickly reworking healthcare, a brand new Vizient® report exhibits.

In keeping with the report, basic pressures – together with affordability considerations, labor shortages, capability constraints and altering payer dynamics – are growing. In response, many healthcare organizations are demonstrating resilience, bettering high quality outcomes and laying the inspiration for brand spanking new fashions of care and progress.

“Healthcare leaders are navigating an ideal storm of upper affected person demand, larger complexity and better prices,” stated Byron Jobe, president and CEO of Vizient. “The present second requires management that may purposefully information their organizations by means of vital decisions about the place to speculate, the place to companion and learn how to redesign enterprise fashions in order that organizations can regulate their course and preserve entry, high quality and efficiency.”

5 data-driven findings that may form healthcare in 2026

• The American healthcare system is below structural stress. Increased prices, growing complexity and chronic high quality issues are altering the use and supply of care. Between 2019 and 2025, affected person acuity elevated by about 5%, however mortality decreased by a 3rd and hospital-acquired infections fell by greater than 20%, in accordance with an evaluation of the Vizient Scientific Information Base. This underlines continued enchancment regardless of growing pressure.
• Monetary sustainability is more and more being examined. Demographic shifts, coverage modifications and innovation-driven value progress are coming collectively. An evaluation from Vizient and Sg2 predicts that the 65+ inhabitants will drive the vast majority of hospital utilization progress by 2035 – together with a 20% improve in hospital discharges, 27% in emergency division visits and 34% in commentary stays – shifting demand to lower-margin care and growing stress on already restricted hospital capability.
• Price stress is evolving and never reducing. Labor prices have stabilized at greater ranges, whereas workforce shortages and rising bills for drugs, gadgets and provides proceed to exceed reimbursement. Whole direct prices per employed healthcare supplier – together with physicians and superior apply suppliers (APPs) – rose 6% between the third quarter of 2023 and the third quarter of 2025, in accordance with an evaluation by Kaufman Corridor, a Vizient firm. Organizations are more and more adopting extra subtle doctor enterprise methods, together with increasing using APPs, which now characterize greater than 40% of employed healthcare suppliers.
• Market habits is altering. Financial uncertainty and capital constraints are accelerating a transfer towards strategic, vertical, and ecosystem partnerships constructed round possession and purpose-driven capabilities as organizations search capital-poor pathways to progress and entry. Whereas total healthcare M&A exercise elevated in 2025, hospital M&A exercise declined, in accordance with a Kaufman Corridor evaluation. These transactions that did happen typically concerned distressed belongings, with deal revenues falling by virtually half a 12 months and mega offers of greater than $1 billion falling by greater than 60%.
• AI affords actual alternatives to cut back waste and rework operations. An evaluation from Vizient predicts that U.S. AI investments in healthcare will develop from $20 billion in 2025 to roughly $100 billion in 2030, however realizing worth is dependent upon redesigning workflows and working fashions, not simply deploying instruments.

“These dynamics require leaders to make sure that operational self-discipline, strategic investments and innovation occur collectively – reasonably than as separate initiatives,” Jobe stated.

Learn the brand new report from Vizient, New Margin Math: The Developments Resetting Healthcare’s Monetary Baseand the related evaluation, Prepare for a reset: A playbook for working resilient healthcare programs.

Learn extra in regards to the press launch right here.