Here’s what experts expect for hospitals in 2025

After a year of staffing challenges and tech innovations, 2025 is gearing up to be a major year for the hospital sector.

Two experts talked with Healthcare Brew about possible upcoming trends in leadership development and health equity initiatives, and they’re also eyeing potential changes to federal regulations for drug discount programs as well as Medicare and Medicaid.

Here’s what providers are anticipating for 2025, according to industry experts.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Stephanie Dowart, CEO, Altius Healthcare Consulting Group

There’s still going to be a lot of focus on financial resiliency and focus on cost management. [Hospitals are] also focused on the staffing, which is retention, recruitment, leadership development. There hasn’t historically been a lot of focus on leadership within healthcare, and I think healthcare organizations are understanding that, in order to retain your staff, you need to give back to your employees.

I think the biggest unknown right now, and one of the things that’s on everyone’s mind is what the outcome of the 340B program will ultimately be. There's a lot of nervousness around that because in the past, depending on which political party [controls the government], there have been some rumblings of getting rid of the 340B program or significantly retracting it, which would [affect] a lot of the rural health communities and other communities that rely heavily on Medicaid.

There are also some components politically, and unknowns as to what’s going to happen from a Medicaid and Medicare funding component. Depending on what that looks like will ultimately depend on what that’s going to mean for the hospitals and what cuts might come from that. If we get into a situation where the Medicaid payments are being cut dramatically, or the Medicaid structure goes away, we might see a large push of patients that are no longer eligible for Medicaid. If you just change the income level slightly, it could push a lot more people into the uninsured population..

Greg Wilmot, president and CEO, NeighborHealth

We need to continue to look at our data in healthcare in order to really close the health equity gaps that exist. That is going to be—or needs to be—an ongoing focus of the industry: focusing on the data and letting the data bring us to effective solutions that can help close equity gaps in vulnerable communities. And in doing so, I think we’ll actually see reduced cost in healthcare. We’ll see reduced utilization. We’ll see improved access to care because folks are getting the right care, at the right time, in the right place.

We also are expecting the Medicare beneficiary population to grow…We have an aging population nationally. We need to solve some of the challenges we see across our health system in order to make sure that we continue to have access to high-quality healthcare services for the most vulnerable among us, and that it is affordable and sustainable.