5 Ways to Build Resilience in Your Healthcare Capital Program

By

Anna Toon

, Tara Cohn

, and Chris Lucas

Last Updated Mar 5, 2026

By

Anna Toon

, Tara Cohn

, and Chris Lucas

The healthcare industry is no stranger to disruptions: Staffing shortages stretch teams to their limits. In the boardroom, shifting regulations and reimbursement models force leaders to rethink cost containment and growth initiatives. In the finance office, procurement teams try to manage rising expenses without impacting quality. And unpredictable waves of patients fill waiting rooms every day — and their expectations for care are evolving. 

To guarantee stability, reactive strategies are no longer enough. Being able to respond to disruptions is a critical part of resilience, but it’s only one piece. The other piece is proactive planning and risk mitigation. It’s less about damage control and more about building future-ready systems based on anticipated risks. 

Resilience also requires more than preparing for the next earthquake, pandemic, or supply chain breakdown. It’s also about building a foundation for growth and evolving to meet new opportunities.

If you want to proactively build resilience, consider this advice from healthcare experts.

There’s always a large problem to be solved in healthcare. But the last decade has pushed the limits of what facilities and their systems are capable of accomplishing. Healthcare has faced things no one could predict. Today, resilience in healthcare means testing boundaries of what you’re capable of in new and different ways.

Tara Cohn

Director

Wipfli LLP

1. Take time to evaluate potential risks.

Technology and data that provide real-time visibility, structured risk assessments and predictive insights can improve resilience by helping you document potential threats and mitigation strategies.

Pay attention to what other organizations seem to struggle with, then determine whether your institution is prepared to navigate disruptions. Doing so can help you understand where you excel and where you need to improve.

2. Prioritize risks based on severity and impact.

Once potential risks are identified, it’s time to determine what to address first. 

For example, at Tampa General Hospital, hurricanes sit atop the list. Operating on an island in a flood zone, the facility is at risk of flooding from surging water. For many reasons, vacating the basement and first floor is generally unviable. To minimize flood risk, the only answer is using flood barriers to stop the water from infiltrating.

Losing power and clean water are also high-risk, high-priority threats. After pinpointing these areas, the hospital deployed emergency wells to support continuity when the facility loses its domestic water supply. Backup power infrastructure was relocated from the first floor to an elevated location within the building. 

Finally, an emergency generator system reinforces the primary power backup system. This setup prepares Tampa General Hospital to preemptively go off the power grid in the event of a storm so it can avoid downtime.

Tampa General Hospital used to be a stand-alone hospital with few ambulatory facilities. Now we’re a healthcare system with almost 200 locations, and we’re growing exponentially. Being resilient means being able to scale our processes and operations.

Chris Lucas

Director of Construction

Tampa General Hospital

3. Educate teams to encourage alignment.

Not every employee will understand the reasons behind the work they’re asked to do, especially if they weren’t involved in the risk identification and prioritization phases of a resilience strategy. 

During that time, there was a shared feeling among the teams that a lot of effort was going into building barriers without certainty that they would be effective.

Fast forward to 2024, however, and the team saw the impact of their work firsthand.

They followed the steps documented in the hospital’s resilience plan and set up the flood barriers. When a 15-foot storm surge encroached, the barriers held, and the hospital wasn’t impacted by floodwater. 

Training, education, and clear communication are important parts of a resilience strategy that ensures everyone understands their role in shaping the bigger picture.

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4. Define consistent parameters across departments.

Building resilience means being able to answer critical questions and make sound decisions. To accomplish this, standard practices must be in place. By accessing this data, teams can now answer questions they used to rely on others to address. 

5. Paint the full picture with data.

By deploying technology that integrates real-time data, predictive analytics and centralized collaboration, you can better understand the impact of decisions from all angles: financial, quality, safety, and more.

But internal data is only part of this formula. External data is just as important. Consider the decision to open a new healthcare facility. Making this decision isn’t based only on internal information. It’s also driven by external data, including:

• Demographic trends like population size, growth projections, age distribution, etc.
• Forecasts about patient volumes, emergency room visits and outpatient service needs 
• Information about other healthcare providers, service gaps and competitive positioning 
• Economic data, including regional economic indicators, income levels and insurance coverage rates 
• Community health data gathered from public health studies, local surveys and feedback 

With the right mix of internal and external data at your fingertips, you can anticipate challenges, optimize resources and make informed decisions that align with long-term resilience and growth. 

Written by

Anna Toon

Director of Public Sector Marketing | Procore Technologies

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Tara Cohn

Director | Wipfli LLP

Tara Cohn is a director with over 15 years of experience in providing healthcare data analytics services. She helps leaders improve decision-making and achieve success with the use of data analytics. Tara’s experience includes provider practice, hospital/health system and healthcare startup/technology. She is a healthcare subject matter expert and has supported initiatives across operations, clinical care, quality, compliance, patient experience, population health, marketing, strategic planning, finance, revenue cycle and human resources. Tara’s passion is in leveraging data analytics to help organizations achieve their full potential with a focus on transparency, optimization and automation via the power of data storytelling.

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Chris Lucas

Director of Construction | Tampa General Hospital

Chris Lucas is the Director of Construction at Tampa General Hospital, where he oversees infrastructure development for the region’s leading academic medical center. Based in Land O’ Lakes, Florida, Chris has more than 20 years of experience managing complex institutional and healthcare capital projects.

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