Designing healthcare for what comes next: A strategic view on quality and growth

As a follow-up to Dr. Badlani's previous Q&A, we take a deeper look at how quality, experience and strategy have converged as defining forces in healthcare. We explore what sustainable growth, data-driven decision-making and disciplined innovation look like in practice and how leaders can translate these ideas into a durable advantage.

Across nonprofit healthcare, we continue to see organizations equate growth with success. In reality, operating on thin margins demands a more disciplined approach. Growth must be evaluated not just by revenue, but by its contribution to long-term sustainability and community value.

Healthcare strategy must be managed as a portfolio. Some services are essential to fulfilling the mission but operate at a loss, while others must generate sufficient margin to support reinvestment. The challenge, and responsibility, for leaders is to balance these forces intentionally, recognizing that not all growth strengthens the system.

Strategic focus and the ability to say no are increasingly critical capabilities. Organizations that expand selectively, aligned to their strengths and long-term vision, are far better positioned to remain resilient and relevant over time.

Quality, safety and experience as distinct strategic assets

Quality and safety have long been foundational to healthcare performance, but experience has emerged as an equally important strategic dimension. These distinct—yet deeply connected—domains must be managed with intention.

High performance in quality and safety is expected. What increasingly differentiates organizations is how care is experienced. Patients are acutely aware of friction, access challenges and emotional touchpoints across the care journey, and those experiences shape trust and loyalty.

Experience is also highly contextual. What matters most varies by patient, condition and circumstance. By understanding those differences, organizations can prioritize improvements that truly matter, rather than spreading effort evenly across initiatives with limited strategic impact.

Data that drives action, not just reports

Data is central to integrating quality and strategy, but only when it moves beyond static reporting. Many organizations remain overly focused on descriptive analytics that explain what happened, without fully addressing why it happened or how to respond.

We see the greatest value when analytics evolve toward diagnostic and segmentation-based insights. Understanding drivers of performance (and how those drivers differ across patient populations) enables leaders to act with greater precision and confidence.

When paired with human-centered design, data becomes a powerful tool for shaping care models that align clinical outcomes, experience and operational efficiency. This combination accelerates improvement and ensures resources are directed where they will have the greatest impact.

From system in name to system in practice

At Fairview Health Services, strategy execution is increasingly focused on operating as a truly integrated system. That shift requires reducing friction for patients and providers.

Beyond traditional access metrics, organizations are beginning to measure the effort required to receive care: how many calls are needed, how often patients are transferred between channels and how easy it is to navigate services across the continuum. Simplifying these experiences is a powerful lever for differentiation.

Equally important is making the system easier to work with for clinicians across employment models. A seamless operational environment supports recruitment, retention, and consistent care delivery, all of which reinforce quality outcomes.

Diversified growth and business model innovation

Sustaining high-quality care requires rethinking how value is created and captured. Traditional care delivery alone often leaves adjacent revenue untapped, limiting reinvestment capacity.

Diversified growth strategies, such as expanding into specialty pharmacy, senior services or other adjacent businesses, can strengthen the core mission when executed thoughtfully. These models allow organizations to capture value that can be reinvested into clinical programs, workforce support and community health.

As demographics shift and population growth slows, strategic leaders are also reevaluating service mix, site of care and long-term capital allocation to ensure alignment with future demand.

Technology and AI: Value over hype

Technology continues to play an important role in healthcare transformation, but it must be evaluated through a disciplined, value-focused lens. From both the provider and partner perspectives, the question is not whether a tool is innovative, but whether it meaningfully advances care delivery and organizational sustainability.

Effective use of AI and digital capabilities should support clear objectives: improving quality, safety and experience; expanding access or share of care; reducing per-unit costs; or enabling new, sustainable business models. Technology that does not move one or more of these levers risks becoming distraction rather than differentiation.

By grounding technology decisions in governance and strategy, health systems can avoid chasing hype and instead deploy solutions that reinforce their mission and long-term priorities.

Looking ahead: Integrating mission and strategy

The future of care will be shaped by organizations that integrate quality, experience and strategy into a cohesive whole. That integration requires broader thinking beyond geography and service lines to include patient expectations, workforce realities and evolving business models.

For nonprofit health systems, the challenge is not choosing between mission and margin but aligning them. When quality and experience are treated as strategic assets, they become drivers of both community impact and long-term sustainability.

You must have the right analytics, benchmarking and strategic frameworks that will translate these principles into action, enabling leaders to design strategies that are resilient, patient-centered and built for the future.

What this means for healthcare leaders now

As healthcare continues to evolve, integrating quality and strategy is no longer optional: it’s foundational. Leaders must think beyond traditional growth metrics and view quality, experience and financial sustainability as mutually reinforcing.

From the provider side, this requires difficult choices about where to focus, how to simplify care journeys, and how to ensure the organization can serve its community for decades to come. From the partner side, it means bringing data, analytics and frameworks that help translate strategy into action at scale.

Ultimately, the organizations that succeed will be those that treat quality not just as a clinical obligation, but as a strategic asset—one that drives trust, resilience and long-term impact.

Learn how Vizient’s data and digital expertise can help you drive growth, quality and profitability.