The Strategy Catalyst Dispatch

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. 

This week's episode covers the American Medical Association's new maternity payment codes, our new CSO Advisory Council, health system access strategy survey results, and insights on consumer segmentation. 

In this episode, we share highlights from a recent Strategy Catalyst webinar where Liz Jones, Research Director, walked strategy leaders through three disruptors reshaping service lines in 2026 and tested a few intentionally provocative predictions. We cover why payvider M&A slowdowns don't mean reduced threat, what the PE retreat from care delivery means for acquisition timing, and why distributors—the disruptor that worried this group least—might deserve more attention.

Want to hear the full discussion, including the polls and live Q&A? Strategy Catalyst members can access the complete webinar recording on our website here. And for a deeper dive on the Cencora-One Oncology deal referenced in this episode, read our analysis in The Strategist here and check out our disruptor response guide here. 

This week's episode covers Humana's acquisition of MaxHealth, the Trump administration's antitrust appeal, the Supreme Court's tariff ruling, CMS's new ACCESS model rates, and CVS's new GLP-1 drug access service.  

This week's episode covers the end of the proposed 340B rebate pilot, healthcare earnings highlights from HCA, UnitedHealth, and Amazon, the MA rate announcement shaking up payer stocks, ChenMed's new stance on GLP-1s, and Sword Health's acquisition of Kaia Health. 

 This week's episode covers key takeaways from the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, the bipartisan healthcare reform package in Congress, insights from our latest Strategy Catalyst webinar on payviders, PE, and distributors, and Zarminali Pediatrics' expansion into new markets. 

 Women in midlife are the highest healthcare spenders on the managed care side and women use healthcare more than men, even when you take obstetrics out. In this episode, Kathleen McHugh, AVP of Corporate Strategy, and Jennifer Todd, VP of the Women's Service Line at Memorial Hermann walk us through the business case for investing in women's health, why they partnered with MIDI Health to address the gap in menopause care rather than build in-house, and the outcomes they've seen two years in, including record employee benefit adoption and a steady flow of referrals back to Memorial Hermann for specialty and in-person care. 

This week's episode explores OpenAI's new healthcare-focused AI products, Cencora's new majority stake in OneOncology, the 340B rebate pilot ruling, and our predictions for 2026.

In this episode of The Strategy Catalyst Dispatch, we unpack why expanding a physician workforce alone can't fully resolve access challenges and how Inova Health System has targeted the problem through a coordinated access-and-flow strategy. 

Michelle Vassallo, VP of Operations, Clinical Enterprise, walks us through the systemwide standards, centralized infrastructure, and unified referral and transfer processes that allow Inova to unlock “virtual capacity” and move patients to the right place, at the right time, with the right resources.

 To learn more of Strategy Catalyst's access work and in-depth case studies, click here: https://hmacademy.com/insights/strategy-catalyst/care-delivery/access-as-a-strategic-product-redefining-how-health-systems-connect-people