Sg2 Blog

Eric Spann, MD, is a family medicine physician at Baxter Health, based in Mountain View, Arkansas. Q: Dr. Spann, how do you envision AI impacting your day-to-day work, your patient interactions and what defines good medicine? A: If we thought that addressing “Dr. Google” was a big part of our daily work, this is going to be Dr. Google on steroids. Patients are now going to have a large...

Brain tumor care is a highly specialized area that spans the cancer and neurosciences service lines. Sg2’s 2024 Impact of Change forecast projects modest growth for brain/central nervous system (CNS) tumor services over the decade: 1% for inpatient, 13% outpatient. Provider systems confront a highly competitive landscape for these low-volume, high-margin services. To capture the opportunity ...

Digital transformation remains a key strategic goal for the health care industry, and the ongoing pressure to optimize workflows, maximize human resources and adjust to powerful technologies like generative AI has led to a resurging interest in the smart hospital concept. Broadly defined, a smart hospital is one that is fully digitized and interconnected across the care continuum, leveraging inter...

Children’s hospital leaders have a full plate in 2025—managing the challenges and opportunities presented by innovative therapeutics, emerging technologies and artificial intelligence, policy uncertainties, regionalization and subspecialty shortages—the list goes on and on. To help you focus and cut through the noise, Sg2 experts have identified four top priority strategic action...

Health care organizations have turned the corner on pandemic recovery and are now strongly focused on strategy and investment. Day-to-day operations have stabilized for most. But the industry’s competitive landscape has irrevocably shifted, and the performance gap between the best and worst has widened. Health systems must chart this new territory with less capital, which makes strategy&mdas...

Partnerships, now more than ever, are critical to health system growth and performance. These alliances exist in a middle ground between loose relationships and outright acquisitions. To achieve their full potential, they cannot be merely opportunistic but firmly grounded in strategy. That strategic focus is chief among the short list of priorities academic systems’ leaders now pursue in the...

In early 2024, the health care data ecosystem experienced a disruption. Long-standing assumptions about the reliability of claims data were challenged, and many organizations found themselves navigating with limited visibility. And for a moment, the industry paused. But we didn’t. At Sg2, a Vizient company, we took that moment of disruption as a signal to accelerate. Rather than just restore...

I've started labeling cybersecurity as the "Achilles' heel" of digital health. Across meetings, workshops, and events, Sg2 experts have touted the opportunities that telehealth, AI, and other digital technologies can bring to health care, but cybersecurity risk always pumps the breaks on those discussions. It's the looming dark cloud. The elephant in the room. A digital skeptic's favorite topic to...

Hospital system chief financial officers (CFOs) face an increasingly complex financial landscape, one shaped by regulatory shifts, technological advancements and evolving patient expectations. Here are 3 top takeaways to effectively navigate in 2025. ► Pharmacy Optimization: With systems reporting 25% of revenue tied to pharmacy operations, this area represents a significant revenue opportunity fo...

St. Luke’s Hospital, a nonprofit health system in the greater St. Louis area, consists of two hospitals with 636 beds, two ambulatory surgery centers, eight urgent care facilities, nearly 200 employed physicians, and a medical staff of over 1,000 physicians across 60 specialties. Post-pandemic, the hospital faced challenges due to the lack of a formalized strategic plan and wanted to refine ...