Natalie Trebes (00:00):
There are a lot of vacuums being created here and the answer is no one is automatically going to come in and save you. This is very much a, everyone needs to look at this situation, look at these dynamics, look at the diffusions and see where are you suited for that and where do you need to bring other partners?

Rae Woods (00:20):
From Advisory Board, we are bringing you a Radio Advisory, your weekly download on how to untangle healthcare's most pressing challenges. I'm Rae Woods.

Abby Burns (00:28):
I'm Abby Burns.

Rae Woods (00:30):
It's a new year for healthcare and for Radio Advisory. Continuing the tradition from the last few seasons of the show, we're kicking off the year with a breakdown of what our listeners need to know about the state of the healthcare industry going forward into 2026.

Abby Burns (00:45):
But before we look forward, let's look at where we are now. In my conversations with healthcare leaders across 2025, I heard you use familiar words like unsustainable or chaos or broken when describing the state of the industry. And a lot of that frustration comes down to the underlying challenge that the stakeholders that make up the healthcare industry are inherently misaligned in incentives, in time horizons, in focus, and that makes change really hard.

Rae Woods (01:13):
It makes it hard and it makes it slow. Healthcare transformation has been incremental at best, but through all of our efforts, health leaders have always held the agency, meaning incumbents, the providers and the health plans have shaped the speed, the scope, and the direction of change.

Abby Burns (01:31):
But that's changing. The reality is that patients, consumers, members, policymakers are all exasperated with the cost of care, with long wait times, with a hard to navigate healthcare ecosystem.

Rae Woods (01:43):
With poor results to show for all of this incumbent effort, we're entering a new era, one marked by diffusion of power and control over care delivery. And to walk us through these diffusions in more detail and what it means for all healthcare players, incumbents, and new entrants alike, we've invited Advisory Board experts, Natalie Trebs and Max Hakanson back to the pod. Natalie, Max, welcome to the first Radio Advisory episodes of 2026.

Max Hakanson (02:13):
Exciting. Thanks for having us.

Natalie Trebes (02:15):
Big year. Here we are.

Rae Woods (02:20):
Big year ahead. And we are at this moment of diffusion of control in healthcare. And frankly, that's not the D word that our listeners probably thought we were going to be using in a conversation about the future of healthcare. They probably assumed that we'd be talking about disruption. What exactly do we mean by diffusion of power and diffusion of control? And why is that a big enough deal that it's framing everything that we are saying CEOs need to know in 2026?

Natalie Trebes (02:51):
It does not mean that incumbent organizations, traditional health systems, traditional health plans are being displaced per se, or that they are not going to have a role in the future or that they need to emulate something that someone else is bringing into the arena. What we're talking about is a shift in how they approach their business and what actually makes their businesses work and how they might need to partner differently or share different pieces of the industry. They might need to invite in some of the competitors and also question some of those fundamental assumptions of what is underlying how the business works.

Rae Woods (03:32):
Where is the biggest diffusion actually happening?

Natalie Trebes (03:35):
So, three places that we want to highlight, and the number one place that we want to focus on is safety net access, how we enable this baseline layer for the entire nation. The federal government effectively has been where it all kind of starts. And what we've seen this year is a diffusion of ultimate responsibility from the federal government to the entire rest of the industry, to states, to health systems, to health plans, to employers, to medical device life sciences firms. Everyone has to figure out what is their piece of the safety net that they're going to support. So, that responsibility is shared or it's falling to different players.

Max Hakanson (04:12):
The second area where we are seeing a diffusion is a diffusion over control of spend management. So, for a long time, health plans, insurers have really relied on this idea of scale to help them manage spend, have a large enough risk pool that they can spread out the costs, then utilize general utilization management tactics, referrals, steerage to make sure that they can continue to provide access to their population. We are seeing that increasingly challenged as the costliness and complexity of some of the disease states we are dealing with are emerging. And so, more and more they are delegating to niche third-party vendors to help them control costs.

Natalie Trebes (05:00):
And last place, I think probably not shocking to anyone either is how we make decisions about treatments is something that is diffusing across all of us. And I would say getting outside of what we think of as healthcare now, whether that is social media, AI chatbots and all of the different tech companies involved and shifting algorithms and new capabilities, but also on our supply side, the clinician side, there's a lot of influences that clinicians are experiencing themselves, tools they are using, choosing to use, or having put in the patient care space with them. And that is a diffusion of influence away from the traditional one patient, one clinician having a conversation in a moment in time.

Abby Burns (05:43):
That's a lot of change that you just talked through.

Rae Woods (05:45):
Right, the three things you just mentioned, diffusion of responsibility for protecting the safety net, diffusion of ownership over high spending, and diffusion of influence in care decisions and those making them.

Abby Burns (06:00):
I want to make sure we have enough time to break all three of these down for our audience. So, let's focus today's conversation on this first diffusion. In that spirit, I'm mindful that there is technically no universal safety net in the US, at least from a policy perspective. So, what is this sort of diffusion of responsibility for protecting the safety net, backstopping the safety net really mean? And how big of a deal is it if the safety net itself is maybe shrinking or disintegrating?

Max Hakanson (06:31):
Let's break this down because we hear this idea of safety net access a lot, really four key components. We have insurance coverage, we have acute and emergency care, we have specialty care, and then we have care coordination and prevention. And each of these four pillars is really under pressure. Now, I think it's worth noting that they're interrelated when one of them is starting to erode, it destabilizes the core. And that is what we are seeing as the government pulls back the most notable thing here being the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as well as the expiration of those enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies. As those changes start to happen, we are seeing pressure on the safety net altogether.

Rae Woods (07:16):
Max, you started to get at the big drivers of the safety net erosion, which here we're blatantly talking about the policy changes that we saw last year. I think it's helpful to remind our audience of what's happening and most importantly, why should they focus their efforts in 2026 when policy changes aren't actually going to go into effect until 2027?

Max Hakanson (07:38):
Ultimately, we believe the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is going to be the most significant healthcare legislation since at least the Affordable Care Act and maybe going back well before then. It is stripping out $1 trillion out of healthcare over the course of a decade. Unlike other previous healthcare reforms where you were squeezing the balloon, pushing money from one side to another. This is stripping a trillion dollars out of the system, meaning everyone is going to feel this impact. You called it out, Rae. It's not going to happen immediately, but we need to start preparing for this. Big cuts to Medicaid on the horizon being the area we are going to feel the most pressure.

Natalie Trebes (08:20):
And I think what's important for the industry to understand is that unlike, I think, past healthcare reforms or bills that have had very purposeful methodology changes and want to change the structure of how healthcare works, you think of Affordable Care Act, you think of adding a marketplace and you think of a lot of pushes towards value-based care as an example, this is more of Congress kind of getting fed up and voters getting fed up with the lack of progress in healthcare cost management, quality improvement, and just saying, "Well, let's just take some money out and they can figure out."

Rae Woods (08:54):
Yeah.

Natalie Trebes (08:54):
So, we're just kind of taking a big budget, not even haircut, but major cut and it is not a specific direction. It's obviously anchored in Medicaid enrollment and Medicaid financing, but it is not necessarily a shift of how the industry is supposed to operate. It is just taking that funding, leaving figuring that out to the states and to the industry players.

Rae Woods (09:18):
And that, and many of the other changes we're going to talk about are going to have ripple effects across the entire ecosystem. And then the actions that we take to deal with those ripple effects will have their own changes. But there are some folks who may not be convinced yet that this is a big enough deal that it's the most significant change to healthcare policy since the ACA at a minimum. There are folks that I still hear that say, "Yeah, I get why this is going to be a huge challenge for community hospitals or for FQHCs, those that see more Medicaid patients." But the reason why I think we're saying that this is the first thing on the list of what all healthcare CEOs need to know is that the impact doesn't stop with those true safety net providers. What are the consequences of access reduction and why are the consequences of a pullback like this a problem for everyone?

Natalie Trebes (10:10):
I mean, the short answer is we don't live in a vacuum. None of us live in silos. We are all in an ecosystem together. The other pushback I hear is about the timeline, and it's easy to think we have a lot of time ahead and maybe Congress might change their mind and engage in mitigating some of these impacts because this is not popular when you strip it away from the rest of the bill. And we've certainly seen Congress act to do that in the past, but more importantly, the trains are moving. And so, the state governments have to be acting now to start setting up the policies that are going to effectuate this bill into the real world. And so that is progress that's starting now. And all of the organizations we talk to, especially health systems that are most affected, are making plans for where they're going to shore up their finances, where they're going to invest more, where they're going to pull back from, how they are going to deal with a lot of uncompensated care, reductions in volumes, higher input costs, difficulty getting staff.

(11:13):
The list goes on and on, so there's so many spillover effects that organizations in your market are starting to prepare and act. And if you are not keeping pace with that, you are going to have some sort of spillover effect, whether that is being left with not the greatest mix of patients in terms of payer or having to deal with new competitive changes that your market counterparts have made.

Abby Burns (11:35):
Max, when you started talking about the safety net, you named the four component pieces of it, right? I think you mentioned insurance coverage, acute emergency care, care coordination, and so on. When those pieces of the safety net get pulled back, what are the actual spillover effects on other parts of the industry?

Max Hakanson (11:52):
That's a great question because as Natalie was talking about, we are an ecosystem that is so reliant on other pieces to function effectively. So, let's start with insurance. When we've long relied on employer sponsored insurance to subsidize the rest of the industry, Medicaid, Medicare, ACA are not as strong of payers. But as you pull back on funding for Medicaid, as you pull back for funding on ACA, we are going to have to rely even more on commercial insurance because they're going to have more uncompensated care, more folks that are uninsured, and that is going to put pressure on different parts of the ecosystem. We feel like the ones that are going to feel it the quickest, maybe the most are rural health systems that are already feeling a lot of pressure as they continue to face pressure, closed service lines, shut down complete hospital units.

(12:43):
It's going to put pressure on those nearby facilities. It's going to change referral patterns. It's going to change the volume, so it's going to impact everyone in that ecosystem. It's not just the one individual rural area or even rural hospital, it's everyone around them in this regional ecosystem.

Rae Woods (13:00):
And the spill-over effects aren't just limited to the provider landscape. It's not just the impact of rural impacting the suburban or community hospital. It also crosses into other healthcare stakeholders. I know Max, every single health plan that I talk to, and you speak to a lot more than I do, are saying, "Yeah, all of our hospital and health system partners are coming to us saying, 'We need better rates in order to stay afloat.'" And of course, the health plans can't just give that.

Max Hakanson (13:29):
Exactly. That's the ecosystem at play.

Natalie Trebes (13:31):
And we've talked about this before, but health plans are in this balancing act position, right? Because they need to make sure that they are trying... This year's been particularly difficult, but they're trying to keep premiums from getting out of control. I think this year feels like they're pretty out of control, but employers are pressuring them to not give these rate increases to providers. On the flip side, employers and all of the other purchasers would like to make sure they have access to the very providers who are asking for those rate increases to stay afloat. So, the health plans have to be judicious here. And they're also thinking about, "If I am not increasing rates sufficiently, that might be a closure, that might be consolidation that also has its own spillover effects that lead to increased rates for the entire network." So, there's so much intricate calculus here with the spillover.

(14:23):
The bottom line is just because you're in the employer commercial pay space does not mean that Medicaid cuts don't affect you.

Abby Burns (15:22):
Let's come back to providers here for a minute, because I think when we look at the stakeholder that's probably going to be most directly affected by some of the changes that we're going to talk about, that is the provider group. And yes, providers are in a bit better of a position at the start of 2026 compared to if we look at say 2022, right? The worst year financially on record for hospitals, but median health system margin per the latest data is still around 0.7%, which isn't super cushy. That's mostly before these funding cuts take place and 7.5 million people over the next 10 years roll off Medicaid and so forth. I think what Advisory Board's modeling has shown is that especially for provider organizations with a high proportion of Medicaid patients, the cuts could be financially catastrophic, to quote our data team. And I don't say that lightly.

Rae Woods (16:09):
No.

Abby Burns (16:10):
This is true for rural hospitals, certainly. I also want to shine a light here on AMCs. I think a lot of times folks think of academic medical centers as sort of the richer cousin of the community hospital, but that's actually not the case. So, I'm wondering if y'all can talk us through why are AMCs positioned to be another gap essentially in the cracking safety net?

Max Hakanson (16:30):
And Abby, I fully agree with your view or the industry's view on, but if we look at the data, we already see that their median margin is lower than that of other non-academic medical center hospitals. There are a lot of problems at play. There has been a shift from inpatient to outpatient, which has put a lot of pressure on their business. Their input costs are really high with labor being a huge challenge for them. And that's before any of these problems that we've even talked about with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the ACA subsidies expiring. So, there's a lot of challenges there.

Abby Burns (17:09):
I think another one, Max, to name there is typically in an academic system, the health system side of the house funds about 60 to 75% of medical school, right?

Max Hakanson (17:20):
Yeah. So, when we think about, there's three parts to their business as an academic medical center, they're doing the care delivery, they are training the future generation with their medical schools, and then they're doing research. They're facing pressure on all of those with cuts at the NIH and funding is going to impact their future research abilities. And then as their care delivery is feeling stress, it's going to be harder to continue to fund their medical schools.

Natalie Trebes (17:45):
We haven't even added what's going on with immigration policies. We're hearing from a decent number of academic medical centers about how it's changed their ability to recruit staff, especially for instructor positions in the medical school and research positions, which is sort of the entire brand identity depends on attracting talent. And they have both a difficulty with what's going on with visas to bring in talent from international settings, but also they are losing, in some cases, talent as others want to emigrate for research opportunities. So, it's a real difficult position therein on the staffing side as well.

Rae Woods (18:22):
Plus the research funding cuts that we saw at the start of 2025.

Natalie Trebes (18:25):
Exactly.

Abby Burns (18:26):
So, what are the consequences of sort of the difficult funding environment that we've been describing for AMCs? And I'll even put it to the broader industry that relies on the research, the innovation, the medical education that comes from them.

Natalie Trebes (18:41):
Once again, a spillover effect is what to think about here. AMCs have, as we've discussed, had those three different parts they're trying to keep in balance and they're very unique in that posture. We think that they are going to increasingly focus on their care delivery side, and we think that they're going to be looking a little bit more like traditional community systems in how they approach that strategy. So more ambulatory expansion, more angling for those service lines that are the targets for centers of excellence that we see a lot of systems try to attract purchasers through having really great protocols for how they're going to ensure quality and efficiency outcomes. We think that AMCs are going to compete in the similar terrain as a lot of other traditional systems.

Abby Burns (19:29):
Well, as you were talking through that, I'm thinking, "Okay, yep, that's what other hospitals are... Oh, yep. Okay. That's what other hospitals are trying to do as well." So, we can see the increasingly competitive environment, I guess, is the best way to summarize it.

Rae Woods (19:40):
Which makes me want to talk about a second part of Abby's question, which is if AMCs are acting a lot more like community hospitals, what does it mean for the fact that we do rely on this sector of the provider industry to do the innovation, to do the education, to do the research?

Natalie Trebes (19:57):
I think, Rae, do you have an answer for that? I don't have an answer for that genuinely. The common refrain we hear, which is, who's going to do something? Who's going to step up? Who's going to fill this vacuum? Our colleague, Ford Koles, talks a lot about how nature abhors a vacuum. There are a lot of vacuums being created here, and the answer is no one is automatically going to come in and save you. This is very much a, everyone needs to look at this situation, look at these dynamics, look at the diffusions and see where they want to play a role. You can't cover everything. Where are you suited for that and where do you need to bring other partners in and help them understand what you need from them and where their role is to play?

Rae Woods (20:37):
Which is perhaps the more optimistic place that I want to go next, because this conversation can get really bleak really quickly when we're talking about the real gaps in the safety net, but I firmly believe that no one in healthcare is going to take these hits laying down. So, at the same time that we're saying that policy changes are threatening rural hospitals survival, which then in turn threatens the suburban and urban hospitals capacity and then their margin and the AMCs that are particularly vulnerable right now are also getting a double whammy, triple whammy maybe. My question is, how are incumbents, how are their partners stepping in, as you said, and responding to these pressures and potentially filling holes in the vacuum?

Max Hakanson (21:20):
So, we've already talked about some of the changing competitive dynamics. Basically, all of the leaders I talk with say we are going to compete for those commercial volumes. That is a strategy we are hearing from pretty much everyone in the industry right now, along with potential service line closures, cuts to areas that are non-profitable, things like behavioral health, maternal care services, those are some of the areas we are hearing cuts. But on the flip side, we're also hearing the potential for partnerships. How can we keep some of these organizations under pressure alive and going strongly? So, I think in rural areas in particular, we're seeing some of these innovative partnerships start to emerge. CommonSpirit is doing this with their collaborative care model, which transfers stabilized patients back to the rural areas and rotate surgeons into those rural hospitals for them.

Rae Woods (22:14):
So, you're saying that the urban hospital, let's say, or suburban hospital is willing to send their own doctor to the rural hospital to do a surgery or do a procedure, let them get the margin on that surgery because it's important to keep that rural hospital afloat. It's more important to give them the margin than to keep it for themselves in that case.

Max Hakanson (22:34):
Yeah, there's benefits for them. It's going to strengthen their referral alignment moving forward. It's going to increase their brand name. So, I'm not saying this is all just out of the good of their hearts, but keeping care local is in their best interest here and it's also in the best interest of the rural hospital. So, it's a symbiotic relationship.

Natalie Trebes (22:53):
Yeah, that's a good example of one of the themes we've talked about with respect to the safety net as utilitarian is kind of how we're going to approach this. That's not necessarily a bad thing. We see organizations trying to be cognizant of how will this benefit them, but in a way that is aligned with building out the safety net. And I think some of the most interesting things happening in healthcare right now are happening in the rural space. And so that's why we're really trying to highlight that these partnerships are such good examples, partly because it's just so much easier to see the need. And I think you can look at the map and clearly recognize, "Okay, we are going to be hit in this very stark way. This patient population will have to travel this much further." The literal strategic planning and analysis is so much more stark.

(23:41):
And also, I think this is building new types of skill sets and team designs and executive structures for a lot of our traditional health systems. And so, this is probably the forefront of some of the new muscles that we'll see organizations building over the coming years. And so, it's important to be paying attention to ex-urban space right now.

Rae Woods (24:01):
So, the actions that leaders are taking are, first of all, a little bit protectionistic, right? How do I make sure that I'm competing for those commercial volumes? How do I make sure that I'm doing the cost-cutting that I need to do? But then there's also the partnership angle. And what I'm hearing you say, Max and Natalie, is that there is a business case for providers to step in and create some sort of patchwork coverage to make sure that patients have access to care, to keep those community hospitals and AMCs afloat, and also not flooding everyone else with high-cost patients and potentially uncompensated care. Every example that I just gave was of traditional players, especially other providers stepping in. Where are we seeing new players or even competitors get in the game to fill gaps?

Max Hakanson (24:48):
I think one of the overlooked pieces of the safety net in general is pharmacy. Doesn't get a lot of attention, but if you remember back, I talked about care coordination and prevention. This is an area where pharmacies play a big role when it comes to preventative care, contraceptives, vaccines, medical education. They're the ones doing a lot of this. And the retail pharmacy model is under a lot of pressure. We saw Rite Aid go bankrupt, close all their stores. CVS and Walgreens closing a number of stores, and this problem is more exacerbated in rural areas. We saw a 6% decline in rural pharmacy locations from 2018 to 2023, faster than the rate in urban areas where maybe you had a CVS right across from a Walgreens next to a Rite Aid, and maybe that was a right sizing, but in rural areas, we are really reliant on those one or two pharmacies in town to provide a lot of coverage.

Abby Burns (25:46):
Max, question for you there, because you mentioned sort of the Rite Aids of the world. How much does it matter if a local Rite Aid or CVS closes, if we're sort of sizing holes in the safety net?

Max Hakanson (25:57):
Especially in rural areas where you might only have one or two pharmacies in town, the closure can be immense. We've seen data on statin users not refilling their prescriptions when their local pharmacy closes. We've seen higher rates of visits to the ED because a lot of ED visits are related to non-adherence to medications. And all of these have financial impacts on the provider side, as well as the plan side. If we're looking at something like Medicare Advantage, when you are calculating their Part D star rating, you can see there is an impact from medication adherence there as well.

Abby Burns (26:34):
Yeah, that's really interesting. A lot of times I feel like we talk about those things as primary care dependent, right? You rely on your PCP or your primary care office for it, but what you're actually saying is, "Hey, pharmacies have a huge role there." So, if we come back to the idea of the diffusion of responsibility here, who is stepping in to fill this pharmacy gap?

Natalie Trebes (26:52):
There's a big array. And I think you see, again, with nature of abhors a vacuum, and certainly e-commerce players like Amazon are very much in this space of providing part of the retail pharmacy services. And I emphasize part there, right? Because the real aspect of the safety net that we think is important to be cognizant of is that availability, that access to a highly trained clinician in your local community who you can talk to face-to-face and go approach. And for many people, they don't even see a doctor, they see a pharmacist, right? It's like their only interaction with the healthcare industry potentially, you can get so much useful support through that interaction and it extends beyond just the clinical per se. It can get into some of that lifestyle and social space as well. So, when you've got the e-commerce players coming in, they're taking care of access to medications and the supply of those medications, but not necessarily some of that ongoing, "I'm seeing you in person and I'm talking with you face-to-face and getting a sense of what's going on with you." And it might not be a consistent touchpoint.

(28:02):
The other side of this we see is health systems and larger health systems building up their specialty pharmacy arms, and that's a little bit different from retail pharmacy per se. It's a little less of the primary care side and more of that intensive treatment side and coordinating when things are getting really complex in the care. And so, that's an important element to also add in, but it's got its own challenges and in terms of they're going to have to run a pharmacy business. And that's a completely different thing for these systems to do. And it also comes with so much capital intensivity the way that systems approach that. So, there's a lot to be hopeful here in terms of innovation, but I think we ought to be vigilant about what are those missing pieces, especially in the areas that have the least access to any other services.

Rae Woods (28:49):
As the responsibility for the safety net diffuses from the federal government across all of us, and we've given a couple of examples about how leaders are stepping in to fill holes in access to care, holes in access to drugs. I don't want to discount the efforts that we are seeing, but my blunt question is, are those efforts going to be enough to completely fill the holes left behind?

Max Hakanson (29:15):
Right. The simple answer there is no. Leaders who step in and are really only going to plug holes when they have a reason to do so related to their business. And that means they're going to have to think carefully about when they want to step in, when they don't want to step in. And let me mix metaphors a little bit here, but that means the holes in the safety net are going to widen even more, more people are going to fall through, slip through the cracks, and that means no, we are not going to meet all of the safety net needs.

Natalie Trebes (29:46):
And I think that's, again, if you're coming at this from that one organization siloed mentality, yeah, we're certainly not going to see individual organizations filling all the holes. I do think there is room to be so somewhat hopeful, but also kind of put that out there into the universe of really thinking about who needs to come together and how do we address some of these holes collectively. That's not just across the provider sector, that's not just across pharmacy, that's also including the local community businesses and the health plans to really identify where are your priorities together. We've been talking about closures of CVS and Walgreens and Rite Aid and all of those, but we also have to deal with the closures of the independent one-off pharmacies that are a huge part of the community. And so that's an important place for, again, the local organizations to be thinking about which of these pharmacies do they want to support and which of the broader safety net pillars are right for their community to nurture.

Rae Woods (30:43):
I want to bring this first conversation to a close. We're going to have to save the rest for a part two. And again, I want to recognize the fact that this conversation has been a little bit bleak. Everyone listening to this podcast got into the healthcare business because at some level they believe in the mission of healthcare. With so much working against us, what will it take to maintain that mission?

Natalie Trebes (31:10):
We've been talking about some really dramatic things happening and it can feel like a lot of chaos right now. I think that's a word that gets thrown to us sometimes as it feels like I can't keep track of everything that's going on in healthcare. Hopefully between this and our next conversation, there will be a little bit more clarity and illumination of it's really actually very simple in some ways, but huge shifts that are these diffusions of responsibility of influence in terms of how healthcare is controlled. That's not chaos, that's actually a story of agency that the healthcare industry has. There have been very clear challenges laid out that the industry can step up and engage with and lead with and provide clarity when honestly the federal government has abdicated in many ways. And I actually have been impressed by the number of leaders who've told me that they have found more ability to move projects forward that are geared towards helping transform their organization and prepare for these changes than they ever have in the past.

(32:15):
A lot of the evergreen priorities to make the system more efficient and to improve experiences and all of that, there is so much alignment and energy because the challenge is so great.

Abby Burns (32:25):
So, Natalie, what is the light at the end of the tunnel?

Natalie Trebes (32:28):
Abby, the only light at the end of the tunnel is going to be the one that healthcare leaders make.

Rae Woods (32:35):
Well, with that, we should probably pause our first conversation and we'll have you back next week to talk about more.

Abby Burns (32:42):
Thanks, Natalie. Thanks, Max.

Natalie Trebes (32:43):
See you guys then.

Max Hakanson (32:44):
Thank you, guys.

Rae Woods (32:50):
We covered a lot in this conversation, but we actually only scratched the surface. We only talked about one way that this diffusion of power is going to be impacting all of healthcare. So, if we're going to really focus on what CEOs need to know in 2026, we have to have a second conversation. So, come back to next week's episode where we're going to continue to talk about the spillover effects of this diffusion in power and control. You don't want to miss it. And in the meantime, remember, we're here to help.

(33:23):
If you like Radio Advisory, please share it with your networks. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating and a review. Radio Advisory is a production of Advisory Board. This episode was produced by me, Rae Woods, as well as Abby Burns, Chloe Bakst, and Atticus Raasch. The episode was edited by Katy Anderson with technical support provided by Dan Tayag, Chris Phelps, and Joe Shrum. Additional support was provided by Leanne Elston and Erin Collins. Special thanks to Chelsea Needham, Marissa Nives, and Morghen Philippi. See you next week.