2026 Health Care Outlook: Dr. Sadaf Sohrab

Sohrab’s 2026 Projection: How well do we handle the challenges of decreased funding? And how do we come out on top with still providing good-quality care but at a lower cost? Whoever handles that best, they will be the ones that will come out on top. If we continue to focus on outcomes, I think we can make this year work for us.

What are the biggest challenges facing health care in 2026?
One of the biggest challenges is definitely going to be funding. The theme is going to be how do we do more with less without sacrificing the quality of care that we provide. That will be the biggest challenge for health care systems, not just here in Springfield but across the United States.

Myriad media reports say health insurance premiums are expected to rise in 2026. What impacts do you anticipate from that?
Patients are either going to see their premiums skyrocket, or they’re just not going to be able to afford their insurance. There’s a potential that more and more people will be without insurance next year, and that’s what really keeps me up at night. I just worry about the people, but obviously as a hospital system, it affects us, too, because now you have all these people who don’t have insurance, but we still have to provide them care, and we will. We also really want the rural hospitals to be successful, because if they’re not successful, people have to travel, and the pressure on hospitals here in Springfield and in bigger cities is going to increase.

To what do you attribute increases in insurance prices, and how do increased costs impact the services health care operators like Mercy can provide?
The cost of health care is increasing all across the nation. Some of the reasons are increases in labor costs, wages, specialty drug prices, new therapies, medical technology – all of this comes with a price, and along with that, the cost of care in the United States has always been the highest among developed nations, without seeing any improvement in the quality of care that the U.S. provides. It has come to the point where this is unsustainable, but this is also an opportunity to reset and to realize that whatever we have been doing for decades is not going to work anymore. Those who are willing to reset are going to be the winners, and in the end, it’s the patient who wins.

What do you see on the horizon in 2026 when it comes to pediatric care?
At Mercy, we hate to see our families have to travel all the way to Kansas City or St. Louis for care. A gap has existed in this community, and Mercy is developing a partnership with Children’s Mercy to fill it. We already have great general pediatric care, but with specialty care and surgery, there’s definitely a gap – and 2026 hopefully will be the year where we see fewer families travel for care.

What other opportunities do you see on the horizon?
At Mercy, we are shifting our model to focus on value-based care. Value-based care is not just, “I’m going to see more patients,” but it’s also the focus on, “I’m going to deliver high-quality care; I’m going to try to prevent disease, and I’m going to make sure that I manage the disease as best as I can so the patient does not get admitted to the hospital in the first place.” We are focused more on outcomes and not volume. That is something we have been working on for a while – kind of ahead of the curve, but we really want to hone in on it in 2026.