This week's episode covers four hard truths shaping AI strategy for 2026, new CMS rules overhauling the ACA marketplaces, Q1 margin recovery, and a six-month moratorium on new home health and hospice enrollment.

This week's episode covers Q1 hospital earnings, UnitedHealthcare's prior authorization rollback, the proposed CJR-X model, J-1 visa delays, and CMS's Medicaid revalidation push.

We dig into how St. Charles Health System, a four-hospital not-for-profit in Central Oregon and the sole major provider across a 32,000-square-mile service area, went from seven Medicare Advantage payers down to one and then turned a twenty-year track record of clinical quality into a negotiating tool that cut cancer treatment authorization times from weeks to a single day.

Matt Swafford, CFO, and Mark Hallett, Chief Clinical Officer, walk us through the decision to terminate contracts with six national MA payers, how they used NCCN concordance rates to negotiate instant authorization with PacificSource, and the CFO-CCO partnership model that enabled it all.

This week's episode covers five big ideas from the Spring CSO Forum, CVS's new pharmacy-only stores, Amazon and Walmart's competing GLP-1 programs, Baylor Scott & White's health plan exit, and who's in and out of the CMS ACCESS model.

This episode recaps three key themes from the 2026 Strategy Catalyst Summit: what it takes to move service line rationalization from theory to action, what a live scenario planning exercise revealed about strategic preparedness, and who should be owning the AI agenda.

Watch our highlight reel from the summit here. And for more on the content referenced in this episode, read our analysis in The Strategist here and check out our Stress Test Scenario Planning Guide here.

This week's episode covers the finalized Medicare Advantage rate increase, new research on AI scribes, Anthropic's unreleased Claude Mythos model and cybersecurity implications, and MedPAC's findings on Medicare Advantage margins.

This week's episode covers the Sutter Health and Allina Health merger announcement, CMS administrator Mehmet Oz's comments on AI agents for Medicare, key insights from the Strategy Catalyst Summit, and THMA's executive priorities survey results.

Dr. Peter Newcomer, SVP and Chief Operating Officer at UW Health, walks us through how two organizations that used to compete built a financially aligned, strategically coordinated partnership — without merging. We dig into how the JOA with UnityPoint-Meriter helped UW Health address capacity constraints, delay a major capital build by years, and create a shared patient flow system.