Healthcare CEOs’ Agenda: Top Priorities for 2025
Ten areas where CEOs are turning obstacles into opportunities.
I regularly engage in conversations with healthcare CEOs, staying up-to-date on their priorities and the challenges they encounter. Given the immense responsibility these leaders carry, they remain composed and determined, transforming obstacles into opportunities in pursuit of their organizations’ missions. Here are their top priorities for 2025.
Acting as a portfolio manager. In recent years, healthcare organizations have faced significant challenges, including margin pressures, skilled talent shortages, and the need to adapt quickly to new technologies. As the industry shifts towards a period of optimism and growth, CEOs view this moment as an opportunity to amplify their impact. In this transformative climate, effective CEOs embrace a strategic mindset similar to managing a healthcare portfolio. This entails a comprehensive consideration of service lines, care delivery methods, facilities, and geographical regions. Furthermore, it involves establishing a clear ROI for strategic initiatives, optimizing resource allocation, leveraging technologies, and constructing partnerships within and outside the organization as opportunities for value creation.
Fostering interconnectivity and systemness. Healthcare systems are moving away from fragmentation to a more integrated and coordinated approach to provide high-quality, efficient care to patients. This requires a clear, system-wide vision and strategy, which translates into consistency in goals, processes, technologies, and experiences for all patients and employees. The uniform experience of systemness fosters patient loyalty and satisfaction with care. It also reduces costs of care and maximizes reimbursements for healthcare organizations. While systemness is certainly a priority for the vast majority of healthcare CEOs, many are only beginning to achieve it. The journey requires healthcare CEOs to cultivate their ability to lead in a more interconnected and collaborative environment, where success depends on the ability to bridge gaps between different sectors.
Staying ahead of regulatory changes. Healthcare organizations face an increasingly complex regulatory environment in 2025. Policy and regulatory changes that might arise in the coming years from the presidential transition could significantly change how organizations run their day-to-day operations and what strategic moves they make. For healthcare CEOs, staying ahead of changes is not just about compliance — it is also about leveraging opportunities and mitigating risks. To ensure their organizations are well-positioned to adapt and thrive in the face of new requirements, CEOs must prioritize operational agility, stakeholder engagement, and scenario planning.
Promoting patient-centered, holistic care. As emphasis shifts from treating illness to promoting wellness and preventing disease, a holistic approach to healthcare is crucial. New patient expectations require healthcare providers to consider new ways to meet patient needs and deliver exceptional, personalized care. This includes customizing treatment plans and integrating wellness education, prevention and diagnostics, and behavioral health services into care to address the whole patient and enable them to become “CEOs of their own health.” Leveraging data-driven insights and implementing continuous feedback mechanisms enhances communication between patients and providers, ensuring care is aligned with patient expectations and supports patient autonomy in managing their health.
Expanding health equity initiatives. As public health challenges intensify, healthcare leaders and organizations are doubling down on health equity. By leveraging innovation, healthcare providers are developing new care models that address social determinants of health. This includes expanding care access to prioritize affordability and enhance patient experience while meeting previously unmet needs for treatment and prevention. Services like school-based telehealth, community mobile care, and home-based hospital care are breaking down barriers such as transportation, financial constraints, and limited availability of care in underserved communities. These expanded services are paving the way for a more accessible healthcare landscape.
Becoming a talent magnet. In 2025, forward-thinking leaders are exploring ways to enhance well-being and build resilience within their workforce, creating a supportive organizational culture that attracts and retains skilled talent. This begins by evaluating barriers to physical and psychological safety, ensuring healthcare professionals and leaders feel safe and supported. Furthermore, healthcare organizations are taking additional steps to become a desired place to work. Innovative talent acquisition strategies, retention programs, learning and development opportunities, flexible work arrangements, and formal recognition programs all contribute to a positive work environment and increase “stickiness.” To sustain that culture, CEOs must also assess how critical cultural factors play into their talent management approach.
Cultivating leadership. Keeping pace with new skills, models of care, and rapid technological advancements requires dedication to leadership development and growth, with a focus on strategically vital roles and high-potential talent. This includes continuous improvement and knowledge sharing from top-level executives to frontline workers. As the skills gap widens, successful organizations are thinking about how to teach transferable, foundational skills like problem-solving and creative thinking. They are also identifying internal career paths for strategically vital roles and upskilling mid-level and frontline professionals’ business acumen to increase their leadership potential. Only in this way can organizations ensure they have a strong pipeline of leaders ready to take on and drive future success.
Building partnerships with employers. With the vast reach of employer-sponsored health insurance plans, employers are pivotal in promoting health and care delivery. For healthcare providers, payer mix expansion is an opportunity to broaden their reach and deepen their impact. Through collaborative partnerships with employers, providers can design onsite prevention and screening clinics and provide education and resources to improve the well-being and health of employees. Doing so reduces the overall cost of patient care for employers and improves work and health outcomes for employees by providing critical access to preventative care and decreasing the need for future medical treatments.
Building the foundation for transformative technologies. Technology and AI hold immense potential for improving patient care, enhancing clinical decision-making, and reducing workload burdens of healthcare providers. But achieving those outcomes won’t come easy — many organizations struggle to fully realize the ROI expectations from technology spending. As healthcare organizations move forward with exciting operational and clinical patient-facing applications of AI and machine learning, they must build out a leadership structure and capabilities to support decision-making and implementation.
Rebuilding trust. Trust forms the foundation of strong relationships with team members, patients, and the broader community. Yet, trust is scarce today, with clinicians questioning leaders’ decision-making, patients doubting technology, and the general public expressing skepticism about healthcare policies. To institutionalize trust, healthcare organizations must foster a culture of transparency, integrity, and ethical conduct while proactively and honestly engaging with the community. Addressing frontline workers’ concerns and creating leadership pathways for clinicians and other roles helps rebuild trust within the workforce. By prioritizing trust, organizations can significantly improve the overall perception and experience of healthcare.
This article was supported by research conducted by WittKieffer’s Commercial Strategy & Insights team.
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