How healthcare leaders are rethinking the future of care now
Healthcare is being pushed to rethink some of its most fundamental assumptions — about how trust is earned, where care happens, how innovation is funded, and what patients and the workforce now expect.
At the Oliver Wyman Health Innovation Summit, leaders explored the need to challenge the status quo, rebuild trust, and turn innovation into solutions to the industry’s biggest problems. Across a series of Executive Sessions, those conversations went deeper into what change will require in practice.
The topics ranged from rural health and primary care to capital, data, and the workforce. But a common message emerged: Incremental change will not be enough. Healthcare leaders need to reconsider how care is delivered, financed, and experienced — and how the different parts of the system work together.
Trust grows when healthcare shows up at critical moments
Trust in healthcare is neither fixed nor uniform. Courtney Gray Haupt, US Health Sector Chair at Edelman, described it as a continuum that varies across different parts of the healthcare system. Hospitals have traditionally enjoyed relatively high levels of trust, but pressures on the system have tested that position.
Barbara Montresor, senior vice president of Marketing and Consumer Experience at Healthfirst, highlighted another challenge: Trust takes time to build and can disappear quickly. One lesson from the pandemic was that the messenger can matter as much as the message. Genuine relationships with communities, therefore, become critical.
Ameesh Vakharia, executive vice president and Chief Strategy and Brand Officer at USAA, offered a perspective from outside healthcare. Organizations demonstrate their value most clearly when customers need them most — after an accident, natural disaster, or death in the family.
For healthcare, the implication is clear. Trust cannot be built through information alone. It requires empathy, meaningful human connections, and fewer barriers between people and the care they need.
Rural health improves when care models start with communities
Improving rural health starts with designing around communities rather than forcing communities into existing economic models.
Robert Allen, Chief Operating Officer at Intermountain Healthcare, emphasized partnerships with community organizations and providers, as well as telehealth, as important ways to extend access. Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield has taken a similar collaborative approach by supporting the Arkansas Rural Health Partnership, a group of 14 hospitals working together on initiatives, including a digital health network.
New entrants are testing different models. Homeward Health, launched by former Livongo executive Jennifer Schneider, MD, is focused on expanding access to affordable primary and specialty care in rural communities. Chief Revenue Officer Aaron Friedkin, MD, said the company is betting heavily on assuming full risk in Medicare Advantage while aligning with other partners across the delivery system.
The models differ, but the underlying idea is the same: Rural health cannot be solved by one organization acting alone.
Primary care must become the organizing layer of healthcare
Primary care faces pressure from both sides. The workforce supporting it is shrinking just as expectations for what primary care should deliver are expanding.
In Illinois, 40% of primary care providers are expected to retire over the next several years, according to Megan Reyna, system vice president, practice Transformation and Quality Improvement at Advocate Aurora Health. Her conclusion was direct: The primary care payment model needs a “massive” overhaul.
Payment is only part of the challenge. Elana Schrader, MD, senior vice president, Healthcare Services and president, GuideWell Health at GuideWell, argued that healthcare cannot continue adding disconnected point solutions and expect patients to navigate the complexity.
Jack Stoddard, CEO of Patina Health, sees an opportunity for primary care to become the glue connecting those fragmented services. That would require a broader definition of primary care — one that positions it not simply as a destination for individual visits, but as the organizing layer connecting patients to the wider healthcare system.
Investors are raising the bar for healthcare assets
Healthcare continues to attract investment, but investors are asking tougher questions.
Edward de Nor, partner at GHO Capital Partners, pointed to macroeconomic forces, including inflation and rising interest rates, that have helped draw investors toward healthcare, including generalists that traditionally focused elsewhere.
Greater uncertainty also brings greater risk, noted Robert Vorhoff, managing director and Global Head of Healthcare at General Atlantic. Meanwhile, a significant gap remains between buyer and seller expectations on price. Ian Wijaya, Head of North America Healthcare Services and managing director at Lazard, noted that the strongest assets can still attract significant competition.
What distinguishes those assets is becoming increasingly important. Kelsey Maguire, managing director at Sandbox, said investors are looking more closely at fundamentals, particularly the path to profitability and the strength of the leadership team.
Growth still matters. But the ability to demonstrate a durable business model matters more than it once did.
Better alignment can unlock more value in Medicare Advantage
The next phase of Medicare Advantage will depend on whether organizations can better align providers, incentives, data, and patient outcomes.
Robert Fields, executive vice president and Chief Population Health Officer at Mount Sinai Health System, argued that equity needs to become a more deliberate strategic priority. Adam Boehler, founder and CEO of Rubicon Founders and co-founder of Honest Medical Group, pointed to stronger partnerships with local primary care physicians and richer data as ways to improve performance and care for beneficiaries.
That alignment also needs to work economically. Todd Van Tol, Executive vice president, Healthcare Value at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, described the insurer’s focus on working with provider organizations that share incentives while creating sustainable economics around areas such as primary care.
The common thread is a need to better connect who delivers care, who pays for it, and what ultimately creates value for patients.
Cell and gene therapies are moving from breakthrough to delivery
Cell and gene therapies have created extraordinary possibilities. Now the healthcare system must determine how to deliver them effectively.
Erin Satterwhite, president of Optum Frontier Therapies and Optum Specialty Distribution, noted that every therapy will follow its own adoption curve, with questions remaining about value relative to the standard of care.
Fundamental questions about delivery also remain. Surya Singh, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Emerging Therapy Solutions, highlighted the need for greater standardization and clarity around who needs these therapies and who is eligible to receive them.
The patient experience is equally important. Dawn Barry, president and co-founder of Luna, described an “epidemic of the undiagnosed” in rare disease and highlighted the isolation patients can experience throughout their treatment journey.
Scientific innovation may make these therapies possible. Turning that promise into impact will require collaboration across the healthcare system.
Healthcare needs more useful data, not simply more of it
Healthcare does not lack data. The harder challenge is knowing what to do with it.
Carla Leibowitz, vice president of Business Development at Flatiron Health, suggested starting with a simple question: What do you want the data for? Too often, organizations build data capabilities without first defining the problem they are trying to solve. Poor-quality data further limits the insights they can uncover.
Even good data has little value if people cannot use it. Albert Chan, vice president and Chief Digital Health Officer at Sutter Health, pointed to a persistent data literacy challenge across healthcare. Clinicians cannot simply be given more information, particularly when it does not fit naturally into their workflows.
The opportunity is not to generate more data. It is to make existing data cleaner, more purposeful, and easier to act on.
Stronger pharmacy systems connect supply, access, and patient needs
Recent disruptions have exposed the importance of resilience across the pharmacy value chain.
For Civica, that starts with the supply chain. President and CEO Ned McCoy said the nonprofit drug company sources the raw resources and materials it uses to produce drugs from the US and Europe rather than China. Civica has also announced plans to manufacture and distribute affordable insulin and expand into retail through CivicaScript.
But resilience is not only about production and supply. Joe Cardosi, founder and CEO of Free Market Health, and Sarah Marche, senior vice president, Pharmacy, Clinical Market Strategies at Highmark, are working together to help guide patients toward specialty drugs that better fit their clinical needs.
Strengthening the pharmacy value chain ultimately means thinking about the entire journey — from how therapies are produced to how effectively they reach patients.
Healthcare needs to redesign work, not just the workforce
Healthcare’s workforce challenge is often described as a shortage of people. The deeper issue may be how work itself is designed.
Rebecca Love, Chief Clinical Officer at IntelyCare, argued that as long as nurses and other clinical staff are viewed primarily as costs, incentives to rethink the workforce will remain misaligned.
Organizations also need to adapt to a more mobile workforce. Rosemary Sheehan, Chief Human Resources Officer at Mass General Brigham, argued that healthcare needs to design for greater workforce movement rather than assuming long-term retention will remain the norm.
And retention is not only about the core job. Melissa Swift, US Transformation leader at Mercer, noted that it is often the work added around people’s primary responsibilities that contributes to burnout.
That distinction matters. Healthcare will not solve its workforce challenges simply by finding more people. Organizations will need to reconsider what work people do, how that work is organized, and what can be removed so clinicians can focus more of their time on what matters.
Across these conversations, one idea kept resurfacing: Healthcare’s biggest challenges cannot be solved in isolation. Trust depends on access. Access depends on new care and payment models. Innovation depends on capital, data, and collaboration. And none of it works without a workforce equipped to deliver it.
The opportunity is not simply to improve individual pieces of healthcare. It is to make those pieces work better together.