Hospitals must rediscover mindset from pandemic | HIMSS 2026

Las Vegas - Six years ago, hospitals faced an unfathomable crisis with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the face of the new virus which strained systems to capacity, healthcare leaders improvised and devised novel strategies and treatments to treat patients, protect staff and keep their doors open.

In an interview at the HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition, Vince Vickers, the U.S. healthcare advisory leader for KPMG, tells Chief Healthcare Executive® that hospitals and health systems need to tap those problem-solving skills to deal with some of the mounting challenges ahead.

“If we're kind of thinking in a Covid kind of mindset, then we should be able to get through this period as well,” Vickers says.

Vickers primarily advises larger health systems, and he has spent time here in Vegas talking to healthcare leaders.

Yes, he says much of the conversations at the digital health conference are involving AI.

But he’s advising hospital leaders, including chief financial officers, that are also grappling with big problems: staffing shortages, higher costs, a regulatory environment that continues to be uncertain, tariffs, an aging population, and the prospect of Medicaid cuts.

“One of the things that I'm really here trying to do is bridge that gap for those IT executives that are getting lost in some of the shiny things that are here, but fundamentally are not working to resolve those issues, which aren't going away anytime soon,” Vickers says.

“What I'm here to do is to try to help bridge that gap and find opportunities to make our healthcare organizations, and our big clients in particular, more efficient,” he says.

Dealing with uncertainty

Vickers acknowledges the current problems don’t equal the magnitude of the pandemic, but he says health systems need to embrace the creative thinking they employed during the worst of the crisis.

“When our backs were up against the wall, we somehow, culturally as healthcare organizations, forced ourselves to make change and do better,” Vickers says.

He points to the success in establishing telehealth programs, which saw relatively little use before the pandemic. With the arrival of COVID-19, tens of millions of Americans received care virtually.

Health systems need to adopt a more resilient mindset in the wake of tariffs. The Supreme Court ruled last month that most of President Trump’s major tariff policies were unconstitutional because they were adopted without the approval of Congress, but Trump has vowed to implement some tariffs on his own authority.

Some healthcare leaders have been frustrated with the inability to know long-term tariff policies, but Vickers says they need to recognize the current reality and adapt.

“I sit down with clients all the time, and they want me to predict the future on tariffs and stuff, and I say, ‘All I know is that we're gonna have some.’ I don't know how big it's going to be, I don't know exactly how much it's going to impact your business, but it's going to impact it.”

Health systems relying on suppliers overseas for some products should be looking to see if there are alternatives from manufacturers in the U.S.

“What you can be doing right now is diversifying your whole vendor network,” Vickers says.

AI opportunities and reality

Even as he cautions against getting distracted from the big problems facing health systems, Vickers says he’s enthusiastic about AI’s capabilities. In the long run, he says he sees doctors and researchers taking advantage of AI to discover new treatments for diseases.

“I'm hugely optimistic about what AI opportunities exist out there,” Vickers says. “I think the opportunity is huge. I just think a lot of people are getting kind of distracted by that when there's stuff that's right in front of us,” he says.

And he bristles at suggestions that AI alone is going to resolve some of the bigger problems health systems are facing right now.

“We can still be looking forward and thinking about how to bring in new technologies like AI,” Vickers says. “But what I don't like to talk to clients about is just thinking that AI is kind of the panacea, the holy grail that's going to solve everything for us, because that's not the fact.”

And he says AI adoption can help tackle some of those challenges. But Vickers says it’s important to tackle pressing financial and operational challenges.

“Resiliency is what it’s all about right now,” Vickers says.

Rural hospitals

Smaller, independent hospitals, including those serving rural communities, have been facing significant financial pressures for some time, and Vickers says it’s not going to be easy for them to find a path forward.

The federal government has launched the Rural Health Transformation Program, a five-year, $50 billion program aimed at improving the health of rural communities. Hospital leaders say the money can do some good, but they also say it doesn’t match the cuts in Medicaid to rural hospitals. KFF, which examines health policy, estimates that Medicaid spending in rural areas will decline by $137 billion over 10 years.

Overall, Vickers suggests the government may need to look at a different approach to sustaining rural hospitals. Vickers says the rural health program will offer some relief, but he says, “You're just kind of buying time.”

Vickers does see potential for telehealth to expand access to rural communities, especially in helping people avoid chronic diseases, or at least manage them more effectively.

Telehealth usage has dropped from the heights of the pandemic, but he says there is potential to use it more widely in rural areas.

“We can debate if telemedicine is the absolute best technology or not, but when we were forced to adopt it, we actually made it work out pretty well,” he says.