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Healthcare Insights for 2026

As healthcare leaders look toward 2026, the industry finds itself at a familiar crossroads—one defined by resilience, reinvention and rising expectations. After years of cost-cutting, clinician and staff burnout, and regulatory volatility, healthcare leaders recognize that future success requires reimagining core business models and organizational change.

In this blog

  1. 1. Navigating regulation and reimbursement
  2. 2. Cybersecurity as an enterprise strategy
  3. 3. AI-ready Infrastructure
  4. 4. Enterprise AI at scale
  5. 5. Workforce strain
  6. 6. Meeting consumer expectations

As we head into 2026, healthcare utilization remains high, margins remain tight and regulatory pressure continues to intensify. Yet, healthcare leaders are being asked to adopt AI at scale, meet new interoperability mandates, stabilize a strained workforce and deliver more consumer-centric care—all while managing rising costs and persistent uncertainty. 

As healthcare leaders lay out their strategies for 2026, success will depend on whether organizations can move beyond incremental improvement and execute enterprise-level transformation across care delivery, operations, technology and workforce strategy. These six priorities are key considerations for their roadmaps.

 1. Navigating regulation and reimbursement

Healthcare leaders rank regulatory and policy changes as a top priority for 2026. New CMS interoperability and prior authorization mandates, federal funding cuts, and increases in uncompensated care resulting from the newly passed H.R.1 Act, uncertainty around the future of telehealth reimbursement, and evolving state-level data privacy laws place new demands on organizations that are already struggling to care for an increasingly sicker and older patient population. 

Healthcare organizations should consider enterprise-wide investments, collaborations, and operational changes to improve their financial health – such as redesigning ambulatory and post-acute care delivery models, as acute care payments continue to decline. 

 2. Cybersecurity as an enterprise strategy

Healthcare cybersecurity is no longer just an IT concern—it's a strategic, enterprise-wide mission as attacks increasingly threaten patient safety, clinical operations and financial stability.  

Despite a small decrease in the number of healthcare breaches in 2025 as compared to 2024, healthcare remains the second most frequently targeted industry, with the average cost of a breach in 2025 at $7.4 million. Healthcare-specific risks continue to be driven by the high value of PHI and industry-specific vulnerabilities, including high AI adoption, supply chain blind spots, large IoT attack vectors and cyber talent shortages. 

A comprehensive zero trust strategy is required to reduce the risk of inherent trust granted in digital systems. Healthcare organizations should consider security to be a board-level, enterprise function and shift from tactical prevention to strategic resilience.

 3. AI-ready Infrastructure

Healthcare CIOs are being asked to bridge a widening gap between existing infrastructure and the scale, performance and flexibility required for the growing portfolio of AI solutions to function reliably and at full potential.  

Healthcare CIOs should consider infrastructure and cloud modernization as a top priority for 2026. Legacy systems, redundant applications, and networks in need of upgrades are among the barriers to fully utilizing modern AI tools. Modern hybrid cloud architecture serves as a strategic enabler for AI, leveraging a combination of edge, public, and on-premises clouds to support clinical and operational workflows. 

Additionally, given the vast volume of data required to run AI solutions, CIOs should continue to drive towards a modern, governed data fabric that is clean, connected, accessible, and secure.

 4. Enterprise AI at scale

Healthcare accounts for nearly half of all vertical AI spend, with approximately $1.5 billion invested in 2025 – more than tripling from $450 million spent in 2024.  

In 2026, turning data into decision-ready insights or generative AI outputs remains a core priority. Organizations are moving away from one-off AI pilots as they advance their AI maturity to reduce governance debt and AI sprawl. Most leaders expect to make or expand AI investments for solutions that are responsibly embedded in clinical and operational workflows across the enterprise – essentially redesigning the business to integrate human and AI workforces. 

Healthcare organizations should adopt a disciplined approach to AI in 2026, focusing on governance, enterprise alignment, security and achieving a measurable financial return.

 5. Workforce strain

Healthcare leaders in 2026 are grappling with compounding workforce strain as persistent clinician burnout and shortages stretch care teams thin, cause high attrition and erode the experience and quality of care for patients.  

Additionally, the high cost of both skilled and unskilled labor requires organizations to do more with even fewer resources.  At the same time, healthcare IT teams are facing skills gaps for expertise in cyber, data and AI-enabled systems, which threaten to slow digital initiatives if not addressed. 

Healthcare leaders in 2026 can combat workforce strains with process redesigns to reduce burdens and inefficiencies, training and developmentfor IT staff, technologies like GenAI and automation to reduce manual work, and creative business collaborations with partners inside and outside of the industry.

 6. Meeting consumer expectations

Patients continue to seek healthcare experiences on par with those they are accustomed to in retail and other service industries.  

Self-directed, unified and frictionless digital experiences, combined with more convenient locations and modalities of care, are important to the modern healthcare consumer.  

Patients have also grown increasingly intolerant of impersonal, disjointed digital journeys that bounce them across multiple applications and interfaces or rely heavily on telephonic experiences. 

Healthcare organizations should prioritize driving brand loyalty as a top priority for 2026 and strengthen their omnichannel strategy. This involves leveraging AI to create hyper-personal and proactive care, blending in-person and remote care more seamlessly, and putting the consumer at the center of their care journey with more options for convenient, affordable and timely care.