By Selase Dow

In the healthcare industry, flipping over the calendar on New Year’s Day can often feel like a case of “out of the frying pan, into the fire.” There is always some sort of urgent initiative on the horizon to consume the next business cycle, whether it’s complying with new regulations, implementing cutting-edge technology or overcoming yet another obstacle to financial sustainability.

It's the responsibility of the executive leadership team to transform the non-stop challenges into opportunities to optimize, innovate and accelerate success across the entire enterprise.


With 2024 shaping up to be another eventful year for health systems, community health centers and physician practices, senior executives will have their hands full juggling a number of high-priority tasks. Taking a moment at the beginning of the year to identify the most pressing issues facing healthcare organizations in 2024 will enable organizational leaders to take a more efficient, agile, and informed approach to problem solving throughout the next twelve months.

Using innovative technology to combat the rising costs of care
The costs of care are continually on the rise, with increases expected to average 7% in 2024 compared to 5.5% and 6% in 2022 and 2023, respectively. These rising costs are compounded by larger economic trends, such as ongoing staffing shortages, that can make it difficult to find efficiencies that compensate for higher spending.

However, the rise of artificial intelligence and other advanced analytics is changing the equation. AI can complete critical but tedious tasks, such as patient risk stratification, faster and more accurately than humans assigned to reviewing charts for outreach prioritization.

With the hours saved creating lists, those highly qualified clinicians can spend their time interacting with patients, which tends to produce higher job satisfaction and better experiences for consumers.

The money recouped on those administrative person-hours can be reinvested into staff recruitment and retention initiatives, including wage parity and mental health and wellness programming to support a healthier workforce that may be more likely to stay with their employer.

Making health equity a core competency across organizations
The social determinants of health (SDOH) have been a major topic of conversation over the past few years as the industry recognizes their outsized contribution to patient outcomes and healthcare costs – and 2024 is slated to be a big year for equity as CMS begins to enact the next phase of its framework to reduce disparities. Effective population health management requires providers and health plans to take a holistic approach to person-centered care, including actively mitigating barriers such as food and housing instability, lack of access to transportation, social isolation and low health literacy.

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