Bringing Joy Back to Healthcare: The Power of Accountable Partnerships

Healthcare is at a tipping point. Clinicians are overwhelmed, patients expect more, and the clutter of traditional solutions is making things worse, not better.

As we near the end of 2025, I can’t help but think about the unprecedented amount of uncertainty plaguing healthcare — and what needs to happen. People are living longer, and with growing complexity, the demand for quality care couldn’t be greater. Inflation and increased expenses, looming Medicaid cuts, and shifting reimbursements are all threatening the future performance of medical practices, hospitals and health systems. Clinicians continue to spend excessive — and unnecessary — time on a ton of administrative tasks, so it’s no wonder rates of burnout and workforce shortages continue to rise. 

According to a Google Cloud study conducted by The Harris Poll, clinicians spend nearly 28 hours weekly on administrative work, while staff average 34–36 hours. Record-keeping, insurance forms, and prior authorizations drive burnout for over 80% of clinicians and reduce patient time for eight in 10 providers, the study reported.

While we continue to talk about AI and advanced tools like agentic workflows to lift the burden and drive efficiency, technology alone isn’t enough. For organizations to build future-proof, sustainable business models, and for the industry to undergo real, meaningful transformation, new approaches that share risk and drive accountability are necessary. I believe accountable partnerships are the best way to change the system.

The toll of administrative tasks

No one would argue that technology hasn’t advanced healthcare, yet with that also comes more burden and tasks for clinicians in a system already marked by antiquated, fragmented, and inefficient tasks. 

When we think about what our clinicians do on a daily basis, tasks fall into two categories: core work and burdensome chores. Core tasks are the essence of why clinicians went to medical school in the first place, and why they continue to do what they do every day — care for patients. Chores, on the other hand, are important tasks such as revenue cycle management, documentation, coding, population health, digital health, and ensuring the right data is in the EHR at the right time.

While these chores are necessary, they don’t bring any value to clinicians or patients and only lead to stress and burnout. In fact, 60% of physicians report often having feelings of burnout and 31% say they are overextended and overworked, according to The Physicians Foundation. 

Healthcare staffing shortages are only adding to the pressure clinicians are facing, and nothing seems to be changing. A Harris poll reports more than half of frontline healthcare workers plan to switch jobs in 2026, and McKinsey reports that 6 in 10 physicians are likely to leave clinical practice altogether. But it’s critical to recruit and retain a healthy population of caring and tech-forward practitioners to take care of our population.

If we want to forge a new path forward, we must think about what — and how much — we’re asking clinicians to do. One in five physicians reports spending more than eight hours on the EHR outside normal work hours. These tasks have an impact both on their time and the meaning of their work. And at the end of the day, work without meaning is demeaning.

If clinicians don’t have to complete certain tasks, and if certain tasks don’t have to be completed in the exam room, they shouldn’t be. Research shows that nearly 20 percent of clinical time is spent on tasks that could be handed over to nonphysician staff or technology. When these mission-critical — but not provider-necessary — tasks are offloaded, clinicians have fewer chores and can focus on their patients. 

Technology can solve for tasks such as scheduling, insurance verification, and prior authorization. It can be “the great enabler” to efficiency, optimal reimbursement, less burnout, and a better patient experience. Yet technology alone isn’t enough to fix healthcare.

AI is a difference maker, but even efficient tools need skilled expertise

AI adoption continues to rise, and now the even smarter agentic AI is on the scene. In 2024, more than 66 percent of physicians used AI, up 78 percent from the previous year. AI is allowing the shift from reactive to preactive, and agentic AI, for example, when trained properly, will only help the workloads of care teams and staff. 

Organizations have traditionally turned to point solution vendors, but these operate in siloes and have not delivered the value that healthcare needs for real transformation. Organizations must leverage existing technology, think about adding new tools, and artfully integrate them into workflows that give clinicians back time in their days. Striking a balance between technology and highly skilled human expertise can ease the administrative burden and address staffing shortages.

As we look toward 2026 and beyond, healthcare leaders must consider new approaches that bring joy and meaning back to healthcare, improve care and efficiency, and build financially sustainable organizations.

The accountable partnership model is gaining traction

Now is the time for organizations to make strategic decisions that will have an immediate and long-term impact on their businesses. Healthcare organizations can no longer be the only ones that take on all the risk while the vendor takes all of the value. They must orient their models around outcomes rather than technology and capabilities alone — and that can be done through novel accountable partnerships built on a care enablement platform. 

These partnerships:

• Offload administrative chores from clinicians
• Improve operational efficiency and care delivery
• Align both parties on performance metrics and revenue goals, with shared accountability for outcomes

Accountable partnerships allow clinicians to focus on patient care and core tasks, improve operational efficiency, and allow both parties to work together while also sharing in the risk to ensure success. 

For years, we’ve been talking about and throwing solutions around all in an effort to fix healthcare, but nothing has made a meaningful impact. If we truly want to see transformation, there must be shared responsibility, accountability, and a concerted effort to work together for the betterment of clinicians, patients, and the system as a whole.

Photo: mikdam, Getty Images

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