The complexity inside hospitals is accelerating. Health systems are managing higher-acuity patients, profound workforce shortages, shifting demographics, rising costs, and rapid technological change — often simultaneously. In this environment, healthcare leaders are being forced to re-examine longstanding assumptions about what truly drives performance and outcomes, and what quietly holds them back.

One emerging insight is impossible to ignore: support services are no longer peripheral. They are foundational to a hospital’s ability to deliver safe, efficient, high-quality care.