EY-Parthenon is actively involved in the European Private Hospital Awards 2026. Why is this initiative important to EY-Parthenon, and what value does it bring to the healthcare sector?
From my perspective, the European Private Hospital Awards are a fantastic platform for collecting and sharing the initiatives being developed by private hospitals across Europe. For EY-Parthenon, the partnership is a natural extension of our commitment to the healthcare sector as it allows us to contribute our experience while staying close to the people who are transforming care every day. This year, EY-Parthenon has supported the Awards from the design of the application and evaluation framework through the review process and coordination with the independent jury. What I value most, however, is the exchange of ideas. The Awards make successful innovations visible, help good practices travel across borders and give healthcare leaders practical inspiration they can adapt in their own organizations or countries. Ultimately, this is about raising the quality, efficiency and resilience of healthcare for patients across Europe.
What is EY involvement in the healthcare sector and how does it support hospitals and healthcare providers?
Healthcare is a strategic sector for EY globally as well as in Europe. We support hospitals, healthcare providers, investors and public-sector organizations across the full transformation journey – from strategy and transactions to operating-model redesign, performance improvement, technology, data and AI. The issues are increasingly interconnected. A hospital cannot think about its clinical model separately from workforce, capital allocation, digital infrastructure or data. Our role is therefore to bring together sector knowledge and multidisciplinary capabilities to help organizations make better strategic decisions and translate them into execution. In Central Europe for example, we work with healthcare organizations on growth and investment strategies, transactions, operational transformation and the use of data and technology to improve both care and efficiency.
What are the main challenges facing the healthcare sector today, and how can hospitals prepare for the future?
Healthcare is facing several structural pressures at the same time. Patients are better informed and increasingly expect healthcare to offer the accessibility, convenience and personalization they experience in other parts of their lives. At the same time, Europe’s population is ageing, increasing the prevalence and complexity of chronic conditions and creating greater demand for rehabilitation, long-term care and continuous support outside the traditional hospital setting. Yet in many markets, the infrastructure for elderly and long-term care is not developing fast enough to meet this demand, which puts additional pressure on hospitals and families.
The workforce challenge makes this even more difficult. Many healthcare systems already face shortages of doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, while the healthcare workforce itself is ageing. Hospitals therefore need to find ways to deliver more and increasingly complex care with constrained human resources. This makes workforce productivity, new care models and a better employee experience strategic priority, not simply operational topics.
Digitization and AI can be an important part of the response, but they also create a transformation challenge of their own. Hospitals need to modernize legacy systems, improve interoperability and cybersecurity, and redesign patient journeys so that digital tools genuinely improve access and care. AI can support diagnostics, clinical decision-making, administration and patient-flow management, helping clinicians spend more time on care and less on repetitive tasks. However, the opportunity is not about replacing medical professionals. It is about augmenting scarce clinical capacity. Realizing that potential requires trusted data, responsible governance and, above all, adoption by clinicians and patients.
Preparing for the future therefore requires a more integrated approach. Hospitals should rethink where and how care is delivered which means shifting appropriate services toward outpatient, home and digitally enabled models, investing in elderly and long-term-care capacity, making the clinical workforce more productive, and using technology and AI where they can demonstrably improve outcomes and experience. The hospitals that succeed will be those that combine innovation with disciplined investment and redesign their operating models around the changing needs of both patients and healthcare professionals.
