Operational Wellness: The Biggest Business Opportunity for Health Systems in 2026

87% of clinicians deal with at least one point of communication friction during a typical shift. That might not sound like much, but it has compounding effects across the hospital.

According to a new report compiled from a survey of nearly 350 physicians, nurses, NPs and APPs, nearly half of the respondents (49%) say the current scheduling practices at their organization don’t adequately account for excessive workload intensity. About four in ten say fatigue from prior shifts isn’t properly factored in when schedules are created. On top of that, nearly seven out of ten providers say their day-to-day communication is split across at least three separate platforms or applications.

These findings, which point to some of the operational drivers of clinician burnout, come at a time when patient demand is already outpacing the supply of clinicians—a gap that is expected to widen significantly over the next decade, according to the National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM). As this workforce crisis simmers, business leaders in healthcare can’t afford to ignore actionable feedback from physicians, nurses and clinical staff. 

The bottom line for a healthcare organization is driven by more than the cost of technology, staffing and patient care — it’s also driven by operational wellness. Moving into 2026, if health system leaders want operational discipline and flexibility that help staff deliver better outcomes, they need to give clinicians what they’re asking for: fairer and more streamlined scheduling, integrated communication and tech systems that follow through on the promise of making it easier to facilitate patient care.

Better operations start with better scheduling

Manual scheduling continues to be the status quo, and that’s a problem: Over 70% of clinicians say their schedule is created manually by a scheduler or through some kind of self-scheduling web portal. Only 6.4% of clinicians say their schedules are auto-generated by scheduling software. Those outdated scheduling practices are directly impacting clinicians’ ability to perform on the hospital floor.

From a personal perspective, one-third of providers say existing scheduling doesn’t consistently honor time-off requests and other personal scheduling needs, which can directly affect job satisfaction and burnout. One of the RNs surveyed summed it up: “Please prioritize more predictable and fair scheduling that better accounts for our personal commitments and fatigue.”

When poor scheduling practices are the norm, it becomes harder to recruit and retain talented staff. When you build fairer and more predictable schedules, clinicians can more effectively plan their lives around work, and it sets them up to be more focused and productive when they’re actually taking care of patients.

Looking ahead to 2026, it can also help health systems mitigate the high cost of recruiting new providers. Clinicians surveyed cited “predictable and equitable scheduling” as the second-most important requirement to stay in their role over the next two to three years. 

Clinicians want tighter communication and collaboration

Delays in call and message responses, as well as alert fatigue, are common communication issues that slow down triage: 39% of clinicians regularly see messages go unread or unacknowledged by the intended recipient, while one-third say they often receive the same message multiple times across different technology platforms. 

Communication issues during transitions also create unnecessary stress for clinicians while jeopardizing patient quality of care. Over half (53%) cited delayed or incomplete documentation as a frequent problem, while 33% pointed to a lack of ownership of the handoff. Meanwhile, 57% of clinicians say waiting for call-backs frequently steals time away from patient care. 

Clearly, workflow disruptions have an adverse impact on patient outcomes and provider job satisfaction. A hiccup here and there is one thing, but in an environment where communication touches almost every workflow, consistent delays and misfires become major contributors to unnecessary care team toil.

Next up: Consolidation of the communication tech stack

While clinicians need the right tech to perform at their best, throwing too many tools at a problem can actually make things worse by setting them up for increased workload burden, fatigue and burnout.

Almost half (46%) of clinicians say they’re frustrated with logging in to multiple systems and devices on a regular basis. The constant back-and-forth disrupts communication, increases the likelihood of transcription errors and other mistakes, and takes up time that should be spent on patient care.

Currently, less than a third of clinicians have access to unified messaging through a single platform, while 56% report using multiple tools for different message types. One doctor surveyed for the report named the preferred solution concisely: “Get a unified system together instead of multiple confusing input methods.”

Operational wellness and clinician wellness go hand in hand

Clinicians understand the changes needed to improve operational wellness. They want connected systems, tools that work together and schedules that account for both organizational requirements and individual preferences. They also want their voices to be heard when changes to these systems are discussed.

But a majority of clinicians feel their leadership doesn’t value their input. Nearly two in five clinicians (39%) say they haven’t been asked for feedback about operational tools or workflows in the past 12 months. Perhaps even worse, 22% say no action was taken even after their feedback was solicited.

It doesn’t get much simpler than this: When clinicians are taken care of, the health of hospital operations will show it. That’s good for patient outcomes, good for caregivers and good for business.