New Report: Healthcare Leaders Across the Care Continuum Identify What It Takes to Achieve and Scale Care Coordination Excellence

Findings from healthcare executive roundtable reveal why excellent care coordination remains the exception—and what it takes to make it the standard

INDIANAPOLIS, April 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Olio, a rapidly growing post-acute and behavioral health care coordination platform, today released a new report identifying five structural levers that can transform care coordination into a reliable system of practice to avoid the breakdowns that threaten quality and drive up costs.

The report "Beyond Heroics: Five Levers for Making Care Coordination Excellence the Standard" draws on the findings of a February 2026 roundtable that brought together 14 executives from across the healthcare continuum to examine care coordination, one of healthcare's most costly and persistent failures.

What the roundtable produced was not a diagnosis of failure but a practical blueprint for change. Participants reached near-immediate agreement on what excellent coordinated care looks like—seamless transitions, clear accountability at every handoff, patient-centered alignment, and communication functioning as structural backbone. They were equally clear on why it doesn't scale: the barriers are not conceptual. They are structural.

The roundtable's findings on structural changes will be of interest to payers, skilled nursing and behavioral health operators, as well as health systems, and others within post-acute care networks. Identified and detailed in the report are five levers that, when adjusted together, can move coordinated care from relational and episodic to systemic and consistent. These levers include:

1. Accountability structures that define cross-continuum ownership of the full patient journey
2. Financial incentives aligned around shared outcomes rather than siloed performance
3. Measurement frameworks that track the engagement behaviors driving outcomes, not just the outcomes themselves
4. Technology that integrates into existing workflows and builds—rather than replaces—human relationships
5. Deliberate investment in institutionalizing those relationships so they outlast individual staff changes.

The timing for change is urgent. Forty percent of hospital discharges go to post-acute care. Post-acute volume is projected to grow 31 percent by 2035, and nearly half of adults with mental illness received no treatment in 2024. The demand for coordinated care is accelerating faster than the systems designed to deliver it.

"When you put payers, skilled nursing and post-acute network operators, health systems, and behavioral health leaders in the same room, you expect debate. What we got instead was alignment — on the problem, the barriers, and the path forward. That kind of consensus across the continuum is rare, and it matters. It means the industry is ready to move," said Ben Forrest, CEO of Olio.

The roundtable took place at the inaugural Olio Care Coordination Engagement Summit with executives participating from Bandera Healthcare, Banner Health, Baylor Scott & White Health, Emcara Health, Evergreen Healthcare Group, Ignite Medical Resorts, Mercy Care / Aetna, Molina Healthcare of Arizona, PARC Home Care & Hospice, Valley Hospital, Quail Run Behavioral Health and Calvary Healing Center at UHS.

The report is available at olio.health.

About Olio

Olio is a rapidly growing post-acute and behavioral health care coordination platform that transforms care coordination by solving what other platforms can't: sustained network provider engagement. Olio automatically connects care teams and keeps them engaged—from SNFs and behavioral health facilities to home health and hospice—delivering the actionable insights organizations need to improve outcomes and reduce costs. For more information or to request a demo, contact [email protected].

SOURCE Olio