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Newsletter | strategy-catalyst

Four insights from the 2025 Strategy Catalyst Summit

This infographic compares where health system leaders expect to increase spending versus where they anticipate cutbacks in 2025, highlighting strategic shifts in resource allocation.

The visual is split into two sections:

Top 5 Investments (areas with the highest planned spending increases):
	•	96% – Automation/AI
	•	75% – Advanced Practice Providers (APPs)
	•	73% – Permanent physicians
	•	73% – Outsourced IT
	•	73% – Surgical equipment

These figures suggest a strong focus on technology, automation, and core clinical staffing stability.

Top 5 Cuts (areas leaders plan to scale back):
	•	73% – Travel nurses
	•	65% – Corporate offices
	•	60% – Administrative staff
	•	55% – Contract clinical staff
	•	45% – Locum tenens (temporary physicians)

A central circular graphic with upward and downward arrows visually emphasizes the contrast between investment and reduction areas.

At the bottom, a callout box reads:

“Focus on where health systems are putting resources to accelerate partnership opportunities.”

This image highlights a broader trend toward automation, permanent staffing, and digital infrastructure, while reducing dependency on temporary or non-clinical roles to control costs and optimize operations.

Last month, we had the pleasure of seeing many of our members in-person at the 2025 Strategy Catalyst Summit in Arlington, Va. Across two days of sessions and peer discussions, we tackled big picture issues like the shifting political environment, and more personal issues like career development and team organization. Overall, strategy executives from 28 health systems joined us for the event.

For this week’s Key Market Dive, we’re distilling our favorite insights from the Summit into four key lessons that we think our readers should digest. In some cases, we’ve anonymized anecdotes to ensure that participants feel free to have candid conversations at our events. For a higher-level summary of the sessions with slide decks included, you can also check out the post-Summit briefing that we published last week.

If your organization is a member, you already have access.