Health systems planning capital and staffing around inpatient beds should brace for two very different growth curves over the next decade, according to Vizient’s 2026 Impact of Change forecast.
Here are 10 takeaways from the report:
1. Outpatient volumes are projected to grow 20% between 2026 and 2036, while inpatient discharges are expected to grow just 7% over the same period.
2. The gap continues a trend already underway. Adult inpatient discharges grew 5% from 2023 to 2024, then slowed to 3% growth between 2024 and 2025, according to Vizient’s Clinical Data Base.
3. Office and clinic visits are projected to grow 16%, reaching 2.87 billion visits by 2036.
4. Hospital outpatient departments and ambulatory surgery centers are expected to grow 15%, to 803 million visits.
5. Home health is projected to grow 27% over the decade, the fastest pace of any setting in the forecast.
6. Total evaluation and management visit volume, a broad measure of patient encounters, is projected to grow 19% by 2036.
7. Virtual visits will make up 20% of all evaluation and management visits by 2036. Vizient frames that growth as additive rather than substitutive, meaning virtual care is not expected to offset the need for physical capacity.
8. The shift is driven by an aging population, payer pressure to move care into lower-cost settings, rising chronic disease rates, and clinical innovations such as expanded GLP-1 indications that are beginning to reduce inpatient demand over the long term.
9. Growing fragmentation of the patient-provider relationship, as more nontraditional entrants compete for the upstream wellness market, and artificial intelligence’s expanding role in triage and patient flow are also reshaping the ambulatory landscape.
10. Overall utilization is moderating even as it fragments, and discharge growth among patients without traditional health insurance is outpacing growth among the insured population, a dynamic Vizient says carries its own downstream risks for hospitals.
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