Operational Wellness: The Biggest Business Opportunity for Health Systems in 2026

Burnout in healthcare can feel like an all-encompassing, nebulous topic. It peaked during COVID, and although things have gotten a bit better, it’s still a major concern. But how do we fix it? Which contributing factors do we tackle first, especially when every organization is different?

That’s exactly what was on our Chief Customer and Chief Clinical Officer Kelly Conklin’s mind when she penned an article for Healthcare Business Today.

When we need clarity about where to start with burnout, the best source of information is the clinicians caring for patients every day. That’s why we recently conducted a survey of nearly 350 clinicians to learn more about what’s making their jobs harder than they should be. Their feedback is the foundation for the simple position Kelly takes: If you want to take care of your clinicians, you have to make operational wellness a priority.

The challenges these clinicians face are many:

• 87% of our survey respondents said they deal with at least 1 point of communication friction during a typical shift
• 49% said the current scheduling practices at their organization don’t adequately account for excessive workload intensity
• Nearly 70% said their day-to-day communication is split across at least three separate platforms or applications
• 39% said they regularly see messages go unread or unacknowledged by the intended recipient
• Despite these challenges, only 39% of respondents said they’ve been asked for feedback about operational tools or workflows in the past 12 months.

As we head into 2026, Kelly makes the case for operational wellness as a top priority in healthcare—better schedules, more reliable care team communication, and hospital technology that actually works (and works together) instead of making it harder to deliver high-quality, efficient patient care.

For more about what it looks like to take care of your clinicians, check out Kelly’s full byline over at Healthcare Business Today.