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When Everything Feels Uncertain, Here’s One Thing We Know: Patients Still Need Care

Kelly Scott

Right now, uncertainty is the only constant in healthcare. Leaders are grappling with budget cuts, shifting policies, legal challenges to long-standing mandates, and an exhausted workforce. The landscape is evolving rapidly, often without clear guidance on what’s next or how to prepare.

But throughout this unpredictability, one thing hasn’t changed: people still get sick. Families still need answers. Communities still rely on timely, high-quality care. In fact, the need for accessible, efficient healthcare has never been more urgent.

This is not a moment to pause. It’s a moment to refocus — and double down on patient access and operational efficiency.

The New Normal of Uncertainty

Across the industry, leaders are feeling the squeeze from every angle. At the policy level, questions around Medicaid expansion, telehealth reimbursement, and DEI initiatives have created a fog of confusion. Funding windows open and close without warning. Priorities shift seemingly overnight. And no one’s quite sure what will be funded — or when.

Operationally, the pressure is relentless. Staffing shortages are hitting hard, not just in clinical roles, but also in IT departments and access centers. Burnout is no longer just a concern; it’s the reality. At a recent industry event, one executive remarked that call volumes at their access center were spiking — not because of new demand, but because frustrated patients couldn’t navigate existing digital tools. The system is overloaded.

Financially, most health systems are operating with little room for error. Margins are flat or shrinking. IT teams are being asked to stretch aging systems further while driving innovation on tighter budgets. In this environment, every inefficiency becomes a liability.

And then there’s the patient experience — the part of the story that can get overshadowed. 

This isn’t just noise. It’s a call to act.

The debates about policy are ongoing, but one thing is clear: people still need care. Delaying that care doesn’t make the need go away, it just makes it more urgent later.

What Happens If We Wait

In times of uncertainty, it’s tempting to hold still. To wait for clarity before making changes. But in healthcare, waiting often makes things worse.

Delaying or deprioritizing access initiatives won’t stabilize the system — it will destabilize it further:

  • Backlogs grow
  • No-shows increase
  • Revenue leaks worsen
  • Health outcomes decline

And once patients disengage from the system, rebuilding that trust is possible but it takes more time, and money, to bring them back. 

Focus, Not Freeze

Instead of freezing, healthcare organizations must focus. That means getting smarter about where and how they invest in access and efficiency.

Lean Into Efficiency

Efficiency doesn’t mean doing more with less. It means doing the right things, better.

  • Implement intelligent scheduling that adapts to patient preferences and acuity.
  • Use automation and AI to streamline administrative workflows.
  • Centralize access operations to create consistency across departments.

Small improvements in how appointments are booked, how reminders are sent, or how patients are guided through the system can lead to big wins — for both experience and revenue.

Prioritize Access

Even modest improvements in scheduling or communication can yield major results:

  • One health system reduced no-shows by 27% through automated appointment reminders
  • Another saw a 15% boost in revenue simply by offering easier self-scheduling

Remember: prioritizing access is essential to healthcare because access is the gateway to outcomes. If patients can’t get in the door (whether that door is physical, digital, or operational) nothing else in the care journey can happen.

Build Resilience Into Your Tech Stack

Technology, too, plays a key role. The future isn’t about ripping out what’s already in place. It’s about building resilience into what’s already working. 

This isn’t the time for short-term patches. Invest in systems designed to evolve:

  • Rules-based workflows to automate repetitive tasks
  • Modular architecture that extends the life of existing platforms
  • Low-code automation to adapt quickly to new policy or market demands

When done right, these investments don’t just help organizations weather uncertainty. They make them more agile, more adaptive, and ultimately more effective.

Leading Through Uncertainty: A Call to Action

This moment calls for leadership — not paralysis. The health systems and clinics that come out stronger won’t be the ones that waited. They’ll be the ones that acted with purpose, even amid ambiguity, in order to:

  • Keep patients at the center — always.
  • Treat access as a strategic lever, not just an operational concern.
  • Make deliberate, high-impact investments, even when budgets are tight.

Because at the end of the day, uncertainty doesn’t change the mission. It clarifies it. If anything, uncertainty makes it clearer than ever: every patient deserves access to timely, compassionate, and efficient care. People still need care. They always will. And the systems that serve them need to be ready — not someday, but now.