Future of Work
CFOs and Chief Medical Officers Agree
According to new data from Korn Ferry, financial sustainability and cost cutting are, for the first time, the top priority across the C-suite and healthcare.
March 23, 2026
Typically, chief medical officers keep their eyes on metrics like clinical outcomes and quality, while chief financial officers watch the coffers. In a notable convergence, those silos are shifting: 72% of healthcare executives say that financial performance and cost containment are top priorities in 2026, according to new data from a Korn Ferry survey of 78 U.S. physician executives. “Cost is king,” says Mitul Modi, senior client partner in the global healthcare practice at Korn Ferry. “If executives don’t have a budget, they can’t go to the back garden and shake the money tree.”
This suggests a shift in the C-suite. Sure, most executives are broadly interested in driving down costs while managing growth. But physician executives are usually focused on care delivery itself. “This blows me away,” says Jim Vincoli, vice president for client solutions in the healthcare practice at Korn Ferry. “Doctors didn’t go to medical school to read balance sheets. But here we are.”
The economic forces are easy enough to describe: successful healthcare organizations carry margins of 3-8%; shifts in reimbursement are lowering those margins, often into negative territory. Executives and boards respond poorly to budgets in the red. “Sustained margin pressure is the defining challenge of this era,” says Vincoli. “Coming out of the pandemic, we thought that this would only last a short while, and it’s not ending.”
Healthcare executives have long focused on efficiencies and wise spending choices. But post-pandemic increases in supply costs, rising interest rates, labor costs and tech investments have spiked costs. All eyes are on recent staff strikes on both coasts, where nurses are pushing for both increased staffing and more pay. “Those are bellwethers—they’ll raise labor costs overall,” says Kae Robertson, senior client partner in the global healthcare practice at Korn Ferry.
The shift is likely fueled by executives finding their own plans curtailed by finances. Perhaps they’re not able upgrade old equipment or invest in AI or hire advanced practice providers. “Financial pressures are clearly being felt by clinical leaders,” says Li Ern Chen, M.D., market leader in the physician solutions practice at Korn Ferry. “They’re not just hearing about it—it’s directly impacting their ability to deliver care.”
Yet the shift toward thinking in financial terms is a conceptual trap. “When people are thinking about dollars, they’re not thinking about people,” says Chen. Plans like, Let’s spend $1 million on that robot this year and, What can we ramp down or shut off?" are inherently quantitative, and pit expenditures against each other, while shielding the answer from view: what can be done with the existing workforce to save money or generate more revenue? When people come into the frame, the perception shifts from scarcity thinking to abundance thinking: Okay, we’ve got all these people here—how can we invest in them?
The return to people sounds warm and fuzzy, but it also pays big. It’s a domino effect: patients want care at organizations where clinicians thrive; insurers are compelled to include those organizations in their networks; revenue improves. “Your biggest focus should be the transformation of your organization to support your physicians, clinicians and patients in a way that really puts you in the #1 spot year after year,” says Robertson.
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