In September 2025, preliminary results from Mercer’s 2025 National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans indicated that the cost of health benefits per U.S. employee could climb an average of 6.5% in 2026, the steepest increase since 2010. Consistent with trendlines, this forecast illustrates why a growing community of savvy healthcare investors are re-focusing their attention on hybrid care delivery as a promising means of stretching dollars while improving clinical outcomes.
Accelerated by COVID-related social distancing, hybrid care delivery models supplement expensive in-person care with less costly but effective telehealth and/or in-home services. While the pandemic doubled their utilization, adoption rates today are lagging even as AI stands poised to further drive hybrid’s growth, forging new tech-enabled pathways for cost-effective, high-quality care.
This divergence represents a significant opportunity for forward-looking provider organizations, private equity firms and other healthcare backers to capitalize on a highly promising moment for industry transformation.
Since its widespread adoption during the pandemic, hybrid healthcare has remained popular among both patients and clinicians. A 2024 Deloitte survey of more than 2,000 U.S. consumers found that 24% are willing to switch doctors to ensure access to virtual health options. That same year a survey conducted by Becker’s Healthcare in conjunction with Teladoc Health revealed that 37% of healthcare leaders believed 20%–50% of patient care could be delivered virtually while 34% believed 11%–20% of care could be virtual.
Despite these statistics, overall growth in hybrid healthcare utilization has been flat since 2022—data that offers only a limited view of the model’s potential. Spiking demand for in-person care once COVID became endemic contributed to less hybrid use, but temporarily, while well-documented change resistance within the healthcare industry likely hindered long-term adoption efforts in a range of organizations. Concerns regarding reimbursement have and continue to represent a significant issue, especially since Congress allowed the pandemic-era telehealth and Hospital at Home waivers to expire on Oct. 1, 2025, impacting Medicare and Medicaid fee-for-service patients.
Healthcare leaders who see past these roadblocks have a much more far-reaching perspective: the U.S. has no choice but to use every possible means of controlling the unsustainable rise in healthcare costs. This issue has become even more urgent for the industry since the U.S. passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025, which could remove more than $1 trillion from the U.S. healthcare system over a decade, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office. Politically, it’s taken center stage with the recent government shutdown, fueled by escalating ACA premiums.
With inflationary trends, provider constraints, AI advances, and younger generations’ preference for more digital, on-demand services, it’s only a matter of time before hybrid becomes a dominant force in the healthcare industry once again, and a differentiator that future proofs organizations.
And yet leaders cannot rely on technological advances alone to maximize well-placed hybrid bets. Though new AI tools generate interest and excitement, they can’t deliver the rapid transformation the U.S. health system requires if top-level decision-making, organizations, and individuals are not moving forward strategically, collaboratively, and purposefully with people-led efforts.
In 2020, the onset of COVID-19 forced healthcare organizations to rapidly and with little warning adopt and accelerate hybrid delivery to meet patient needs and maintain revenue. Today, investors and operators have runway to prepare for an all-but-certain time at which patients receive more tech-enabled healthcare services, digitally and/or at home.
Will Busch, III
Will Busch, III is President of FMG Leading, a human capital advisory firm that partners with executives and investors on a mission to make healthcare work, better.
