AI & organizational realities, rising labor costs, and specialty care as the next wave of virtual care and VBC: insights from 150 payer & provider execs | Ezra Mehlman (HEP) and Tom Cassels (Manatt)

Kevin is joined by HEP Managing Partner, Ezra Mehlman, and Executive Partner, Tom Cassels, to discuss findings from Health Enterprise Partner’s annual LP survey of ~150 health system and health plan executives. 

They highlight widespread but shallow AI adoption which has the potential to widen gaps between best-in-class organizations that redesign processes, and laggards that “slap on” tools. 

They also discuss the finding that nearly 90% of providers expect labor costs per discharge to rise in 2026, driven by slow human/organizational change and persistent clinical labor pressures. 

They also discuss virtual care’s “next wave” as operationally embedded by specialty (e.g., behavioral health, OB/GYN, orthopedics), and growing payer-provider collaboration via specialty-focused risk/shared-savings models (e.g., kidney, cardiology) and improving interoperability as a path out of adversarial “bot vs bot” dynamics.

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