5 Trends Shaping Healthcare in 2026 (and 3 to Leave Behind)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

In 2000, a doctor predicted that healthcare would enter an “age of accountable consumerism in which patients will demand service excellence.”¹

Check, check, and check.

25 years later, hospital leadership teams are simultaneously navigating what you might call “exciting” change—like the new and tantalizing capabilities offered by AI—and more familiar challenges like staffing shortages and clinician burnout that undercut their ability to execute their core mission.

What will define the next chapter, and which trends will shape operations, clinician wellness, and patient outcomes in 2026?

We asked our own leaders, who have decades of combined experience in clinical and/or technology roles, to share their takes.

Key Takeaways

ROI and time-to-value become requirements: ROI will be hard-baked into every technology discussion. Healthcare leaders will demand fast and measurable impact from every investment.
Consolidation gets smarter: Cost savings are important, but they can’t come at the expense of critical workflows and functionality.
Care moves beyond the four walls of hospitals: As more care moves to outpatient clinics, ambulatory settings, and at-home settings, healthcare systems and workflows must keep pace.
Agentic AI steps into the spotlight: AI in healthcare is everywhere, but the focus will shift toward agentic and outcome-driven AI that frees up time and improves outcomes for teams and patients.
Security is a core strategy: As healthcare increasingly adopts digital tools and AI, the risk landscape will expand, placing greater pressure on a systemwide security strategy.
We need to leave some trends behind: Overconfidence in EHRs, AI that is more hype than reality, and reactive planning need to stay in 2025.

ROI and Time-to-Value Become Requirements

Hospital leadership teams have always cared about return on investment and time-to-value, but they haven’t always been non-negotiable.

In the past, metrics like “patients served” or “staff satisfaction” were often enough to justify new initiatives. But amid growing financial pressure and uncertainty, leaders are rethinking how they evaluate their investments—from equipment & technology to new locations and new people.

“Any time there’s uncertainty or changes in the world, health systems tighten up and only make purchases with a clear ROI,” says PerfectServe President Taylor Rohrberger.

Now, every decision must deliver a measurable impact on patient care, clinician efficiency, or time savings. “It’s no longer enough to talk about soft outcomes like burnout,” Taylor adds. “Those still matter, but today’s conversations must focus on hard metrics, like revenue, time saved, or measurable improvements in patient care.”

And that reality will also reshape how leadership at the highest level is thinking. “A lot of leaders are becoming mini CFOs,” adds PerfectServe CEO Guillaume Castel. “They’re being held to the same financial standards as any CFO, and the goal will be to do more with less without feeling like they’re going backward in terms of technology.”

Consolidation Gets Smarter

Over the past 10 years, tech stacks have grown to encompass everything from scheduling platforms to virtual care tools to a wide range of smaller point solutions. Each of these pieces of technology was adopted to solve a real problem, but over time, they’ve actually created new ones: fragmented workflows, siloed data and communication, and perhaps most importantly, rising costs.

That’s why consolidation is at the top of the priority list for many healthcare organizations. But unlike the blunt-force rip-and-replace strategies of the past, 2026 will usher in a smarter and more strategic approach that prioritizes interoperability, flexibility, and—hearkening back to our good friend ROI—measurable outcomes.

Taylor says this shift is already underway, but he also urges caution. “If you consolidate too quickly,” he explains, “you’ll end up with a system that solves 80% of your needs, but fails at the most important 20%.”

Guillaume agrees: “My view is that [when you don’t consolidate your tech stack in a thoughtful and deliberate way], you’re not managing risk—you’re simplifying at the expense of value.”

For that reason, both leaders are advocating for an integration-first mindset. Rather than eliminating tools outright, leaders should first focus on building strong connections between systems, including with vendors willing to work together.

“Vendors should also integrate with everyone, including competitive solutions,” Guillaume shares. “The goal should be to improve clinician workloads and enhance patient experiences.”

Adapting Tech Infrastructure to Support Decentralized Patient Care

In 2026, driven by value-based care models and the growing adoption of virtual health, care delivery will continue to shift away from the traditional hospital model toward ambulatory settings, virtual visits, and even patients’ homes.

And while this shift may improve access, convenience, and even provider availability, it will also strain the operational capacity of many health systems.

“When you go outside the four walls of the hospital, you’re no longer working in Epic or Oracle Health,” explains Taylor. “Instead, you’re dealing with 15 different EHRs and a group of clinicians who all work across 5 different hospitals.”

The result? More fragmentation, especially with communication, scheduling, and other important elements of real-time care coordination. Leading health systems will need to adapt by building infrastructure that supports decentralized care delivery across multiple systems, locations, and teams—all without compromising the quality, speed, or consistency of care patients receive.

Agents and AI Step Into
the Spotlight

Staffing shortages aren’t going away anytime soon—and, unfortunately, neither is burnout. That’s why next year, healthcare leaders will lean into new solutions that help their teams do more with less without sacrificing quality of care.

One of the most significant shifts we expect to see in 2026? Agents and AI.

“Agentic AI is going after the user experience,” shares PerfectServe CTO Bob Hackney. “Take something simple, like a patient changing an appointment. Today, they might be routed through an IVR (interactive voice response) system, sent a text message, or directed to a website to make a change. But with agentic AI, which acts autonomously and carries out actions in real time, that interaction becomes a live conversation.”

In the year ahead, expect to see agents and AI show up in other tangible ways:

Scheduling copilots: Agents that allow doctors to ask about upcoming shifts, make changes, or even swap coverage with another doctor.
AI-enabled cameras: Intelligent systems that can detect and analyze patient movements in real time, recognize subtle changes in their well-being, and send a proactive alert to care teams before an incident occurs.
Proactive patient engagement: AI agents that can review medical history, match patients to their preferred specialists, and even automatically initiate follow-up scheduling.

Over time, and with AI applied the right way, this shift should unlock faster access to care, less manual effort for frontline teams, and most importantly, more time for clinicians to focus on patient care.

Security Becomes a Core Strategy

There’s no question that technology is transforming healthcare for the better. But more tools mean more data and a larger surface area for ransomware, phishing, hacks, and data leaks.

The numbers make the urgency clear. According to cybersecurity firm Black Fog, ransomware attacks have increased by 36% YoY between Q3 2024 and Q3 2025.² Meanwhile, there were 26 major healthcare data breaches in September 2025 alone.³ This all reinforces that healthcare will remain the top target for cyber attacks in the year ahead.

“We’re very aware that security has to be a top priority for hospital systems to think about,” explains Bob. “And that’s everyone’s responsibility.”

In his view, the cybersecurity landscape in healthcare “is just progressively, year over year, getting more intense.” That means lots of proactive preparation and a “defense in depth” strategy that covers everything from perimeter protection and asset security to real-time incident response.

Even well-intentioned actions are introducing risks, as Ben explains: “When a nurse is in a hurry to reach a doctor, they might text her because it’s faster than using a secure messaging tool. That’s a PHI leak.”

That’s why in 2026, health systems will take a more strategic approach to security by reducing unchecked vendor sprawl, closing integration gaps, prioritizing platforms with proven safeguards, and training everyone as a frontline defense.

Trends We Hope Don’t Make
It to 2026

But even as we gaze hopefully into the future, it’s important to remember that not all trends are good trends.

In the article from 2000, the author called out several fading trends: prepaid delivery models that created conflict, failed integrations that left physicians unpaid, and a mountain of admin burden.

Fast-forward to today, and we’ve got a different set of trends we’d like to leave behind.

1. The Belief That EHRs Can Do It All

EHRs were built to digitize records, not run health systems. “There’s an overconfidence that hospitals can leverage their EHR to do 100 different tasks versus the 3 or 4 things they were originally meant to do,” says Taylor.

This overextension is creating gaps in coordination, discharge planning, follow-up, and patient communication, which ultimately adds friction for clinicians and patients.

EHRs are powerful tools, but they can’t be everything to everyone for every clinical scenario. Where better EHR solutions exist, health systems should pursue them enthusiastically.

2. AI Hype vs. AI Reality

“AI is doing really good things,” Taylor says. “But there are thousands of smaller vendors trying to infiltrate health systems with just ideas.” That noise is crowding out meaningful innovation and pulling mindshare toward tools that won’t survive or provide value in the long run.

Ben agrees: “Let’s move beyond the bubble talk and get into how AI and agents can actually drive better care and real ROI.”

Rather than chasing shiny objects, we need to take an intentional approach that builds on existing systems and uses agents to solve real, operational challenges we’re facing today, as well as the ones we can’t yet see coming.

To be clear, this is part of the maturation process for any new technology—see Gartner’s Hype Cycle model for reference. But AI is so tantalizing and takes up so much air in the room that the progression to products with tangible, repeatable outcomes will be a welcome one.

3. Healthcare Being Under Pressure

Between an uncertain policy landscape, an overreliance on tech vendors, and a relentless pace of change, there are so many unknowns that are making it difficult for health systems to plan for 2026 and beyond.

“We’re completely dependent on specific vendors, like for cloud hosting. When they go down, the internet doesn’t work,” explains Bob. “We have to realize that the system is flawed, and at some point, it’ll break.”

It’s time to break that cycle. In 2026, health systems will need to not only recognize the flaws and uncertainty but also team up with partners who’ve navigated change before.

Where Do We Go Next?

If there’s one constant in healthcare, it’s change, and 2026 will be no exception. Traditional care models will continue to expand beyond hospital walls. AI and agents will reshape how clinicians operate and interact with patients.

And as pressure mounts, leaders will rethink bloated tech stacks, take a smarter approach to consolidation, and streamline operations to better support their teams and patients.

So, where do we go?

The year ahead will be defined by the way healthcare leaders embrace these changes and opportunities—whether that’s adopting smarter healthcare communication systems, exploring new AI and agent use cases, or doubling down on security.

Those who act with intention now will be best positioned to navigate the sand that continues to shift under their feet.

What needs to change in Healthcare in 2026? 343 clinicians told us the truth.

Read the Survey

Sources

The Emergence of Consumer-Driven Health Care, American Academy of Family Physicians: https://www.aafp.org/pubs/fpm/issues/2000/0100/p46.html
Cybersecurity Firm Reports 36% YOY Increase in Ransomware Attacks, The HIPAA Journal: https://www.hipaajournal.com/q3-2025-ransomware-report/?
September 2025 Healthcare Data Breach Report, The HIPAA Journal: https://www.hipaajournal.com/september-2025-healthcare-data-breach-report/

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