Where Does Your Health System Fall on the Specialty and Infusion Growth Journey?

Over the past decade, specialty pharmacy and infusion care has emerged as a strategic growth priority for health systems seeking to improve patient access and strengthen value across the continuum of care. The share of accredited specialty pharmacies operated by hospitals and health systems grew to 27% in 2024, nearly doubling from 2017.¹

But growth brings new complexity. As specialty medications, infusion therapies, and reimbursement dynamics continue to evolve, health systems must continually evaluate how they build, scale, and improve these services.

While every organization's journey is unique, understanding your current stage of growth can provide valuable insight into the challenges you face today and the opportunities that lie ahead. To help organizations benchmark their progress, we've developed a Specialty and Infusion Growth Journey that outlines three phases of maturity: Plan, Grow, and Mature.

Plan

If your health system falls into the Plan phase, that simply means you’re early in defining and coordinating your specialty and infusion strategy. Health systems here often lack a fully defined strategy, their teams are working in different directions, and patient drug access to therapies and visibility are still coming together.

Organizations in the Plan phase are working to establish the foundation, the operational pieces that make everything else possible.

Grow

If your organization is ready to turn prioritized opportunity into results, it might fall into the Grow phase. As a significant shift, this phase requires a different kind of strategic alignment. For example, you might find that referral opportunities often slip through due to inconsistent support of workflow and referral processes. Or drug access delays might slow therapy starts due to bottlenecks like prior authorization and benefits investigation, eroding the financial opportunity you’ve worked to build.

In this phase, organizations know what they’re trying to build, but struggle with execution, friction, and scaling what’s already working across your enterprise.

Mature

There’s still work to be done even as a Mature organization in the Specialty and Infusion journey. These health systems have moved through the work of building and scaling and are now focused on optimizing performance and staying ahead of the market.

As new therapies launch, payer dynamics evolve, and the complexity of running specialty and infusion at enterprise scale starts to compound, these organizations must continually their strategy to keep it competitive with the rest of the market. Opportunities for growth in this phase look like anticipating market evolution and optimizing therapy mix and long-term site-of-care strategy.

No matter where your organization falls on the specialty and infusion journey, understanding your current phase is the first step toward identifying the opportunities ahead. Whether you're building the foundation, scaling across the enterprise, or optimizing your strategies for future growth, the right next steps depend on where you are today.

Take the Specialty and Infusion Growth Assessment to discover your health system’s phase and next steps that advance your strategy here.