Healthcare Trends Report 2026: AI, Workforce Strain, and Rising Safety Risks
Healthcare leaders are rethinking strategy as financial pressure, workforce burnout, workplace violence, and expanding AI adoption reshape care delivery.
In 2025, healthcare leaders faced a convergence of pressures: a persistent financial squeeze, an intensifying workforce crisis, and an increase in workplace violence against care providers — all while navigating the rapid expansion of artificially intelligent tools across clinical and operational systems.
Together, these factors are forcing leaders to fundamentally rethink strategy, technology investment, and the employee value proposition.
While financial instability is not new to industry, new and pending legislation amplified uncertainty, requiring leaders to scrutinize each investment with greater caution. 2 | A Look Back: 2025 A Look Back: 2025 The Prominent Introduction and Scaling of AI In 2025, AI tools transitioned from pilot programs to enterprise-wide implementations, driven by the desperate need for efficiency gains and administrative relief.
The race for efficiency. To combat administrative overload, organizations rapidly implemented generative AI tools for clinical documentation, coding, prior authorization, and workflow optimization. This transition promises to successfully reduce manual tasks and return clinical time back to providers.
A new risk layer. The scaling of AI, however, introduced new, complex security and legal risks. Executives wrestled with questions around data privacy and security (especially for large language models), algorithmic bias in diagnostic tools, and the legal/ethical liability of AI-driven clinical recommendations.
A Look Back: 2025
The Deepening Workforce Crisis and Burnout The workforce landscape shifted from a projected shortage to an urgent concern about retention and resilience. The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis projected a 10 percent national RN shortage by 2027, with some regions anticipating gaps up to 24 percent.
Leaders began prioritizing what healthcare workers value most: psychological safety, visible support, and improved working conditions.
Retention tipping point. Burnout, rising violence, and emotional distress continued to drive turnover. Organizations focused on workload redesign, automation of administrative tasks, flexible staffing models, and, most critically, providing safer work environments.
The shift to workforce-centric leadership. Organizations have recognized that compensation alone is no longer enough to stabilize the workforce. Leading systems invested heavily in safety measures, mental health support, and programs designed to attract new talent while retaining existing staff. 61% of Nurses said they plan to leave their job within the next 12 months. AMN Healthcare.
This year, workplace violence cemented its status as a major financial, legal and operational risk — no longer just a security concern, but a core driver of the staffing crisis, compliance risks, and quality of care.
A pervasive threat. Healthcare workers remain five times more likely to experience violence than the average U.S. worker, extending beyond EDs and behavioral health units, and into nearly every care setting.
High financial burden. The AHA’s Burden of Violence to U.S. Hospitals report estimated $18.27 billion in annual costs tied to violence, including turnover, workers’ compensation, legal fees, and care for injured employees. Violence is now recognized as a direct threat to quality, safety, retention, and financial stability.
Yet many organizations are failing to sufficiently prevent it. A 2025 survey by Harris Poll found that: 48% of healthcare workers want access to panic buttons 61% of nurses, 53% of doctors are more concerned about their safety now, 77% said safety measures haven’t improved in the past 12 months, 85% of healthcare workers have experienced some form of workplace violence.
Each time a CrisisAlert badge is used to signal for help, an incident report is initiated, providing valuable insights into workplace safety vulnerabilities. The following data reflects key trends from these reported incidents. ® TM #1: Duress is a Daily Reality INSIGHT: Behavioral escalations are no longer isolated to high-volume days.
Safety planning must assume every day is a risky day, with staffing, training, and readiness reflecting that. CrisisAlert allows you to visualize your own trends, specific to your facility, taking the guesswork out of planning.
2024 saw alerts peak on certain days of the week. This year, alerts have evened out across all seven days, with only slight dips on Sundays and Mondays.