A recent Deloitte Center for Health Solutions survey of health care finance leaders revealed that 84% are concerned about business conditions stemming from potential regulatory and policy changes, macroeconomic uncertainty, and disruptions related to tariffs and supply chains. Notably, 73% of respondents reported concerns about revenue growth and operating profitability (figure 1). This marks a change from Deloitte’s earlier outlook for 2025, where health care leaders reported that they expected a year of growth.
The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions conducted its sixth annual US Health Care CFO Survey in the spring of 2025. We surveyed 64 US health care finance leaders, including 32 from health systems and 32 from health plans, to identify their top issues and priorities.
The surveyed health care finance leaders expressed concerns about consumer affordability, increasing health care costs, and the potential impact on their organizations’ financial performance. For instance, some health insurers noted that the Medicare Advantage medical loss ratio in early 2025 was the highest it has been in several years, due to a significant uptick in members’ use of health care services. This trend may continue throughout the rest of the year.1
Internal concerns like workforce challenges, cost reduction, and cybersecurity—once top priorities for health care CFOs in our previous surveys—seem to have become less urgent amid rising external factors, according to survey respondents.
Although workforce attrition and shortages appear to have stabilized, issues like clinician burnout and low employee trust in health care leadership remain.2 Cost concerns have also waned, with finance leaders now focusing more on growth than on cutting expenses, though monitoring costs can be important given ongoing policy and technology changes.3 Similarly, cybersecurity has dropped in priority, even as cyber threats continue to rise.4 However, overlooking these internal issues could become a blind spot, especially as health care organizations pursue innovation and growth in an increasingly complex environment.