Industry Expertise | July 2025 Healthcare leaders navigate uncertainty as they plan for the future

The healthcare industry is facing an elevated level of uncertainty, even for a dynamic sector that’s seen its share of business cycles. The operating environment for not-for-profit (NFP) healthcare systems is more complex than ever with sector dynamics shifting and financial headwinds intensifying. Against this backdrop, healthcare system leaders must balance financial stewardship with increasing patient care demands while rethinking traditional strategies and maintaining the agility needed to adapt in an ever-changing environment. 

Hospital resilience comes from active planning for payer pressures, labor shortages, and rising costs. To help organizations prepare for what’s next, four strategies stand out.

“Leading healthcare systems prioritize growth so they can achieve even greater economies of scale,” says Oliver. “There’s a host of questions you’ll need to address as you formulate your growth strategy. How do you manage supply chain risks? Where is service demand growing, and what disruptive technologies do you need to plan for? What changes in Medicaid reimbursement do you expect, and how will you address them?” Grady adds, “With more policy uncertainty nationally, and economic volatility globally, growth planning has gotten much tougher.”

Grady explains, “COVID put a lot of strategic growth plans on hold, and with the pandemic no longer dominating the financial conversation, there’s a contingent of hospital boards and finance committees that want to get growth plans back on track. M&A activity has slowed this year. While it may be down year over year, it can still play a role in growth—so how do you identify an ideal opportunity? Private equity is less aggressive on the physician and facility side right now and is less likely to want to serve as an acquisition partner. Instability in the entire healthcare market means it's harder to gauge the right price. We’ve worked with enough healthcare systems to see that pushing through those challenges can yield acquisitions that will help them achieve their growth and scale goals.”

Additional investment in lower-cost delivery settings is paramount. Oliver says, “More and more procedures are approved each year to be done in settings like outpatient and ambulatory facilities. Failing to invest in the latest advancements can disrupt physician referral patterns and weaken key patient relationships.”

Identifying growing markets or shifting patient traffic patterns remains a core skill for strategy leaders. Grady adds, “Leaders know that being where the patients are is crucial. They’ve got to expand into new locations, placing primary and urgent care facilities, surgery centers, emergency departments, and medical office buildings close to patients. Dominant healthcare systems want to be the first choice for their patients at every point along the birth-to-death continuum.”

“Potential federal funding cuts mean it’s more important than ever that healthcare systems positively affect the health of the communities they serve,” says Grady. “Improvements in population health and progress in well care versus sick care will come from systems that are adept at exploring and backing the use of the latest medical advancements.”

Several of the medical advancements that are expected to have an outsized impact include:

• Robotic surgery. “Healthcare systems that can build a business case and deploy the capital to fund the equipment and skills needed to keep up with robotic surgery advancements will have an edge,” says Oliver.
• “GLP-1s have the potential to be game-changers,” Oliver continues. “These drugs have had remarkable success addressing a host of chronic conditions—diseases like diabetes and weight management, cardiac problems, sleep disorders, and more—that represent a huge part of overall healthcare costs. We’re still seeing challenges getting these drugs covered by insurance, but they’re creating a positive impact for patients who can access them.”
• Genetic medicine is another advancement with the potential to create a seismic shift. Oliver says, “Individualized treatment plans can be based not just on a patient’s condition, but potentially on their genomic profile to see which drugs or clinical procedures they’ll respond to best. That’s the future of medicine—tailoring treatments to individual patients.”
  
  Grady adds, “Personal pharmaceutical solutions tailored to your genomic structure are booming. The concern we’re hearing is whether research dollars will continue to flow to these emerging approaches that offer so much promise. Rather than worrying about what might happen, it’s better to play the game today as best you can with the tools you have available.”

For researchers, that may mean looking beyond the NIH to keep exploration and development of future drugs and medical devices moving forward. Oliver says, “With federal funding cuts for research at universities and government agencies seeming more likely, researchers must branch out to private foundations, charities, and potentially, foreign governments.”

“We’re facing all kinds of potential changes to how healthcare is paid for and governed in this country right now. That’s what keeps healthcare leaders up at night,” says Oliver. Today’s dynamic landscape demands the financial leeway to ride economic waves and respond with new initiatives at strategic moments, which makes the choice of a banking partner more important than ever.

Oliver advises, “Look for a banking partner with a demonstrated commitment to healthcare organizations, industry expertise, and the breadth of services to help take full advantage of emerging opportunities in the coming months and years. They should understand the challenges you face and what local peers and competitors are doing—as well as command a depth of knowledge about hospitals and systems across the country. You want consistency so you can be confident that they’ll be there and can support you through all kinds of change.”

“You need a network you know and trust that brings expertise in the industry but also in specific areas like credit, treasury, and public finance,” adds Grady, “plus a local relationship manager you’re comfortable doing business with. At Truist, we engage with over 165 healthcare systems, so we’re informed at a deep level. That gives us a lot of insight to help our clients with issues they face.”