The view from VHEF 2025: Three themes to drive healthcare transformation

Healthcare leaders who want to drive true organizational transformation must grab the steering wheel — and hold on tight.

Is the road bumpy? Uncertain? Filled with obstacles both expected and unpredictable? Yes to all three. But never pump the brakes on your mission to provide the best possible patient care.

That was the prevailing message at this year’s Vizient Health Care Executive Forum, where an undeniable current of positivity underpinned the event despite the many challenges healthcare executives continue to face. As one speaker noted, it’s time to “give oxygen to hope.”

There was indeed an air of optimism as presenters leaned into their ideas (and ideals) for bolstering clinical and financial outcomes in healthcare institutions of all types, sizes and geographies. Several strategic themes emerged this year that traced a roadmap for transformational change.

Agentic AI: Get ready for real ROI (in the form of rote task removal)

Agentic AI — applications comprised of multiple AI models working without human supervision to automate tasks — drew comparisons to society-altering inventions like airplanes and cell phones, largely due to the technology’s advanced reasoning capabilities. However, experts noted this brave new landscape is dotted with caution signs: Incremental implementations of agentic AI are advisable, particularly before venturing into patient-facing territory.

However, many administrative functions are prime opportunities for AI deployment to address workforce shortages and burnout. By ridding staff of rote tasks that allow them to work top of license, you improve employee satisfaction while simultaneously strengthening your organization’s consumerist approach (more on that in the next section). Some of the most promising current and future applications for agentic AI include revenue cycle management, appointment scheduling, the creation of discharge summaries and ambient listening for clinical documentation, which has shown some early success in reducing the dreaded “pajama time.”

AI governance was top of mind for many attendees, including how quickly technologies should be deployed and what guardrails to establish. That’s why starting in low-risk areas is key — these projects will reveal your cybersecurity, change management, and education and training needs so you can ensure appropriate infrastructure for future implementations.

"Take the wheel”: Intentional leadership will accelerate the future of healthcare

Intentional leadership begins with having a clear sense of direction: What has to change to improve how we care for our communities? Once the destination has been determined, leadership must take the wheel and drive the organization forward.

When defining the destination, a good place to start is with customer needs. As one speaker noted, health systems for decades have focused on a supply-side mindset and how to optimize their assets. But this has nothing to do with the customer. The pain points on the customer/demand side are where transformation needs to occur.

Many of the customer’s pain points — and opportunities for improvement — lie in the space between health system verticals. How long does it take a customer to get a scheduled appointment? If a referral is needed, how much more time is required to see a specialist? What are the quality and safety issues that occur between visits? How effectively are providers in different verticals communicating about and coordinating the patient’s care needs? Health systems must construct a horizontal overlay on their “tapestry of verticals.” Getting a patient to the right place for a first visit is just the start; making the right connections to help them move seamlessly through the care journey will differentiate your system and build customer loyalty.

The use of technology in making these horizontal connections is a prime area for innovation in an industry that often still relies on paper forms and pencils on a clipboard. Whether through texting, an app, or some other form of digital platform, the experience for health system customers seeking to engage with your health system should be frictionless.

These changes may entail some risk and require thinking beyond the strictures of current organizational and payment structures. What opportunities for bringing in new customers, for example, may lie in providing more services in the home, even if these services are not reimbursed well? The “cost of capture” for new customers will be more than made up by the economic value of a committed customer.

Deeper connections = better outcomes: Partnerships are mission critical

First, let’s differentiate superficial collaboration from actual partnership, which is the deeper, more complex and frankly more complicated dynamic healthcare leaders must navigate to revolutionize care (and more specifically, patient access). True partnership means relinquishing control in areas where you’re used to having it, whether you’re uniting with other healthcare institutions, community organizations, nonprofits, vendors or internal stakeholders.

Certainly, loss of control is a real fear and margin degradation can’t help but be a concern. But aligning on desired outcomes and making tradeoffs to achieve shared goals is the name of the game if you want to even the healthcare playing field and identify avenues to reinvest in your organization and the community writ large.

Some examples:

• Partnership among NFP hospitals: Recently, four not-for-profit hospitals came together to form Longitude Health, a holding company that aims to serve as a “as a springboard for the scalable delivery of quality care.” Doing so meant learning from each other’s strengths to challenge the status quo. The participating organizations initially identified 80 potential areas to address, then narrowed the list to focus on the most promising opportunities to transform care delivery. The initiatives were sequenced to meet each partner where they were rather than expecting everyone to move at the same pace. Stakeholders banked on the adoption of a “marriage mindset” to drive success — sustainable partnerships require a shared vision, mutual sacrifice and long-term commitment.

• Partnering to improve access and better patient outcomes: If unaddressed, direct medical costs associated with disparities in healthcare access and quality could exceed $1 trillion by 2040. Partnering with and investing in community organizations can help address those gaps through the development of “wraparound” solutions that target drivers of health like food insecurity, transportation, housing and literacy — and recent data compiled by Vizient Member Networks shows hospitals that enact such solutions improve mortality. It's also a reminder that an effective partnership strategy begins with data: Use it to identify and hyperfocus on the areas and patients within your community that have the most significant gaps in care.

• Internal stakeholder alignment: Make sure your entire internal leadership team is on board with external partnerships, which helps to create transparency and agreement on allocation formulas for operational and strategic growth. For instance, one CFO outlined how they teamed up with other internal leaders, including the chief digital officer, to identify their organization’s top 10 pain points and decide which ones could be most effectively and efficiently solved by partnering externally.