10 Key Points from Deloitte's 2026 Global Health Care Outlook
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Global health system leaders enter 2026 cautiously optimistic, expecting revenue and margin improvement while wrestling with stubborn pressures on costs, workforce, and cyber risk. Executives outside the US are notably more upbeat, prioritizing care model transformation toward outpatient, virtual, and preventive care, whereas US systems remain constrained by fee‑for‑service incentives that still reward treatment over prevention.
Across markets, leaders see generative and agentic AI as an important operational lever, especially for workflow automation, workforce optimisation and patient engagement, but not yet a strategic game‑changer, with adoption limited, regulation still evolving and ROI only beginning to materialise.
At the same time, escalating cyber threats and data‑privacy expectations are pushing boards to allocate cyber budgets on par with AI and digital health investments, underscoring that technology deployment must be matched by resilience and trust. Against this backdrop, the central challenge for 2026 is to harness digital and AI tools in business models that are financially sustainable, workforce‑friendly and oriented toward whole‑health and preventive outcomes rather than episodic reactive care.
10 Key Points from Deloitte's 2026 Global Health Care Outlook
1. Health system executives in Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US are broadly optimistic about 2026, but US leaders are significantly more cautious and more likely to report a negative or uncertain outlook than peers.
2. Non‑US leaders are bullish on financial performance: about 70% expect operating revenue and margins to rise in 2026, and only a small minority anticipate significant cost increases.
3. To support revenue growth, executives plan to invest in core business technologies, expand digital and AI tools, and focus heavily on workforce engagement and retention to drive productivity.
4. AI is seen more as an efficiency lever than a 2026 strategic game‑changer: roughly 30% of health systems operate gen AI at scale in selected areas, only 2% have enterprise‑wide deployment, and most do not expect transformational AI impact within 2026.
5. Cost savings are expected primarily from AI‑driven workflow automation (cited by 64%), predictive workforce analytics (55%), and tech‑enabled patient engagement and remote monitoring (49%), alongside care model shifts toward outpatient and digital services.
6. Preventive and proactive care are rising priorities outside the US: 45% of non‑US executives see care model transformation as a leading 2026 trend and 38% expect a strong focus on prevention and early detection, versus only 7% in the US, where fee‑for‑service still favors treatment volume.
7. Workforce shortages are the top concern globally, with the WHO projecting a 4.5 million nurse shortfall by 2030 and some countries (e.g., the UK) expecting large shares of clinicians to leave practice within five years, pushing leaders to prioritize productivity and retention.
8. Cybersecurity and data privacy are critical board‑level issues, especially outside the US: nearly half of non‑US executives name cyber as a top 2026 concern and plan to allocate about 14% of tech budgets to cyber, comparable to gen AI and digital health platforms.
9. Regulatory uncertainty is slowing AI uptake: the EU AI Act imposes stringent risk management on AI tools, Canada lacks a dedicated AI law after its federal proposal stalled, and Australia is still developing guardrails, forcing many systems to rely on existing privacy frameworks.
10. Despite near‑term caution, AI in health care is on a steep growth trajectory (projected market expansion from about $39 billion in 2025 to $504 billion by 2032, with North America holding roughly half of 2024 share), and executives expect gen AI/agentic AI to consume around 19% of tech budgets as they shift care toward virtual, home‑ and community‑based, and preventive models.