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As healthcare landscapes evolve, service line management must adapt. Discover the three strategic pivots health system executives must make to modernize their service lines.

3 pivots to modernize your service lines

Health systems must empower service line leaders to operate with authority and take true cross-continuum initiative. Learn how to drive alignment and growth with six innovative tactics and case studies.

6 tactics to empower service line leaders and unlock growth

Learn how to strengthen collaboration between service lines and design new care delivery models to meet the rising demand for complex, multidisciplinary care with six innovative tactics and case studies.

6 ways to break down service line silos

Learn how to set your organization apart, meet community needs, and drive reliable returns in your service lines with case studies of health systems achieving differentiated growth.

3 ways to pursue differentiated growth for your service lines

General

What’s driving — or slowing — service line growth?

Get an overview of the volume outlooks, key drivers, and strategic imperatives for six key service lines and specialty care areas in our comprehensive, convenient cheat sheets.

Ready-to-Use Resource

Service line benchmark grids

Assess your service line’s position across program benchmarks and identify opportunities to advance your program to the next level.

As care delivery evolves across diverse sites, providers and their partners are planning their future ambulatory footprints. Learn four tactics to position your ambulatory business for success.

Setting up your ambulatory network for the future

Podcast

268: Create an ambulatory care network that’s smarter — not just bigger

Improve ambulatory efficiency before expanding sites. Smart growth means better operations, clinician alignment, and partnerships (yes, even with your competitors).

Health systems are turning to ambulatory care to bolster their legacy hospital business, but this is an unsustainable patch as market pressures intensify and care shifts outpatient. Systems must transform their ambulatory strategy today through strong commitments to building cohesive ambulatory capabilities, or they’ll find themselves struggling to compete and survive in their future market.

It’s time for systems to change how they prioritize and design their ambulatory strategy

Quick Guide

Oncology service line outlook – 2026

Get our predictions on key drivers, volume outlooks, and strategic imperatives that are driving (or slowing) growth in oncology service lines.

Quick Guide

Cardiovascular service line outlook – 2026

Get our predictions on key drivers, volume outlooks, and strategic imperatives that are driving (or slowing) growth in cardiovascular service lines.

Quick Guide

Guide to today's top obesity care trends

Dive into the latest obesity care market trends — from disruptive virtual-first business models to changing economies of care — with our comprehensive guides for life sciences and service line leaders.

General

Survey results: Insights on health system purchasing today

Learn how health systems are changing how they define product value with insights from more than 50 leaders in value analysis committees (VACs) and pharmacy and therapeutics (P&T) committees.

We surveyed health system leaders on how they are reevaluating purchasing strategies as federal policy shifts, court decisions, and economic uncertainties introduce new financial pressures. Here are our four biggest takeaways.

Survey insights: 4 ways political uncertainty is affecting health system purchasing

Our Care Variation Reduction Assessment tool equips your organization with actionable data to transform cost management and operational efficiency.

Identify your biggest opportunities for care variation reduction

Ready-to-Use Resource

Care Variation Reduction Assessment

How should you prioritize your care variation reduction (CVR) efforts? Use this tool to size your system’s CVR opportunity by service line, facility, and specialty in terms of length of stay or dollars saved.

Podcast

267: Care variation reduction: A $100B opportunity

Health systems know that reducing unwarranted care variation improves quality and lowers cost. Advisory Board research identifies five misconceptions holding leaders back from getting the most out of their CVR efforts, and how to overcome them.

Presentations and workshops

Whether you're looking for topical presentations or dedicated focus on a challenge or initiative, our expert support gives you access to healthcare experts in different ways to match your time and needs. Learn more.

Understand the trends defining today’s healthcare landscape

State of the healthcare industry | Presentation
Understand and prepare for the biggest changes happening in healthcare right now. Discuss the market forces leaders should watch and the strategic bets leaders should make to navigate the industry’s future dynamics.
Value-based care, demystified | Presentation
Understand value-based care (VBC) and how to implement it at your organization. This dialogue will clarify what VBC is, what it looks like in practice, and how it affects provider organizations. It will also delve into current and future trends.
Navigating AI in healthcare | Presentation
Equip your leaders with an understanding of artificial intelligence (AI), the potential benefits these technologies offer, the unique challenges AI presents in healthcare, and how organizations, leaders, and teams should respond to AI today.

Strengthen organizational capability to deliver results

Mind the gap: Building enterprise leadership capacity to thrive in complexity | Presentation
Learn why traditional leadership practices are no longer enough in today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous operating environment. We will explore the shifts required to increase enterprise leadership capacity based on our decades of work with thousands of leaders across the healthcare industry.

Navigate financial pressure with bold, data-driven strategies

How to improve your operating margin in today’s uncertain times | Presentation
Health system margins have improved, but financial stability remains under pressure in today's volatile political and economic environment. Experts from Advisory Board and Optum Advisory will discuss bold strategies to transform financial performance, unlock new revenue streams, and reduce operational, clinical, and administrative costs — covering revenue cycle modernization, workforce optimization, supply chain management, clinical variation reduction, and patient access and throughput.

Events and webinars

2026 summit series

The future of healthcare is resilient

The healthcare industry is facing a transformative moment. As leaders, it’s up to you to shape how your organizations approach investment and partnership decisions, care delivery, and technology. Being intentional about these will ensure a viable, efficient, and patient-centered healthcare ecosystem.

For this summit series, Advisory Board will bring together executive teams from across the industry in four exciting destinations. You will be equipped with pertinent insights and action steps to take back home.

Topics include:

Sustainable health system growth
Care variation reduction: Strategies for success
Metrics that matter: Assessing and proving your value

Browse the full agenda, learn more, and register.

Dates and locations

Nov. 10-11 | Nashville, TN
Dec. 8-9 | Virtual

2026 roundtables

Cardiovascular
AI
Specialty pharmacy
Oncology
Value-based care
Nursing

2026 webinars

Join one of our 70+ annual webinars to learn about the latest healthcare industry trends and topics.

2026 State of the industry + top health system trends
State of the nursing workforce
Market and service line trends
Benchmarks
Health system growth
AI in finances
Care variation reduction
Value-based care

Learn more or register

Leadership building through Advisory Board Fellowship

Chief Operating Officers and operations executives represent a critical leadership role at healthcare organizations, responsible for overseeing the day-to-day functions and aligning operations with vision and strategy.

Operations executives are responsible for the overall operating performance of the organization. Operations executives are involved in or accountable for a broad set of initiatives involving a wide range of stakeholders — from cost containment to workforce efficiency. This is no small job as leaders face more complexity, disruption, and rapidly changing circumstances — requiring greater emotional intelligence, resilience, adaptability, and agility than ever before.

Advisory Board Fellowship is designed to help operations executives navigate the complexities of the healthcare industry and develop the capacity to more effectively advance organizational performance.

Participating leaders leverage the Fellowship Practicum Project to positively impact finance, operations, quality, safety, and patient experience.

Upcoming Cohorts

Spring 2027 Launch

March 31-April 2 | Washington, D.C.

Fall 2027 Launch

Sept. 29-Oct. 1 | Washington, D.C.

Learn more about our custom research offering

Custom research

Gain a competitive edge by partnering with Advisory Board researchers to deliver specific answers to your most pressing questions. Our custom research offering brings together our proven research methodology, industry expertise, and a deep understanding of your organization, equipping you with the tools and insights needed to refine your strategies and make informed decisions.

Custom research scoped to your specific need

We design custom research engagements using a variety of our capabilities to ensure the insights and tools we provide help you act on your top priorities. Sample capabilities include:

Qualitative interviews to uncover how leading organizations and your competitors are approaching their top strategies.
Quantitative surveys to bring you the numbers that illuminate key trends externally or internally to your organization.
Custom benchmarking to compare yourself to peer organizations and identify top strengths and improvement opportunities.
Customer insights to improve your market penetration and customer experience.

Opportunities for your organization in 2026

Customized best-practice research to drive organizational performance assessments and needs diagnoses.
Cheat sheets and discussion guides to facilitate productive conversations on issues your customers care about most.
Stakeholder insight analyses giving you a deeper understanding of your key stakeholders, their priorities, challenges, and decision drivers.
Custom growth driver assessments that pair qualitative and quantitative insights to identify the market forces that influence demand for particular services and offerings.

Our products and services

Research Membership

Data-driven, actionable insights to inform decisions

Learn from more than 200 Advisory Board experts
Access over 300 new research deliverables each year
Leverage our forecasting tools to support strategic planning

Custom Research

Insight-driven answers and tailored guidance

Get actionable insights, contextualized to your organization's challenges and priorities
Inform your strategy with top emerging market and industry trends
Request extensive research across topics that span the entire healthcare ecosystem

Advisory Board Events

Opportunities to network, learn, and grow your expertise

Experience agendas aligned to your team's greatest challenges
Tackle market challenges by collaborating with cross-sector research experts
Connect and network with leading healthcare decision-makers

Expert Support

Expert advice and actionable guidance for healthcare executives

Host insightful presentations for your teams or customers across relevant topics
Get individualized support from our experts
Overcome hurdles and energize stalled projects with workshops led by our experts

Advisory Board Fellowship

Enterprise Leadership solution to equip leaders to thrive in complexity

Implement strategic leadership shifts proven to drive business outcomes more effectively
Get support on critical priorities from diverse industry peers and executive coaches
Expand personal and team capacity to address persistent challenges

Sponsorship

Opportunities to showcase your brand, product, and expertise

Leverage our tools, tactics, and distribution channels to engage target audiences
Grow your brand awareness
Generate leads for your organization