Mary Frazier, principal, director of healthcare planning, EwingCole (New York)
Editor’s Note: This article is part a Healthcare Design’s Industry Predictions series. Throughout January, HCD will share perspectives from respected industry voices on where the sector may head in 2026 and what challenges and opportunities are on their radar.
Mary Frazier (Headshot: Courtesy of EwingCole)
Healthcare Design’s 2026 Healthcare Design Industry Predictions series continues with Mary Frazier, principal, director of healthcare planning, EwingCole (New York).
Here, Frazier discusses some of the opportunities and challenges she sees for 2026, including the shift to tech-as-workforce and safety infrastructure, standardization to drive ambulatory growth, and the persistence of renovation-heavy capital plans.
Healthcare Design: What lessons did the industry learn from 2025’s challenges?
Frazier: The industry kept relearning the same hard truth: financial and supply pressures don’t just shape budgets—they reshape scope, phasing, and standards. Elevated expenses and tight reimbursement conditions forced sharper prioritization and value engineering earlier in design.
In practice, this meant we had to be more disciplined about defining what truly drives clinical, operational, and patient experience outcomes versus what’s simply “nice to have.” It also accelerated interest in flexible planning, incremental build-out strategies, and repeatable solutions that can be scaled as funding and market conditions shift.
A related lesson was that resilience now has to be designed in from day one—through alternates, procurement-aware specifications, and phasing concepts that protect operations and patient access. The most successful projects weren’t necessarily the biggest ones; they were the ones with a clear strategic story, an adaptable execution plan, and early alignment between clinical leadership, finance, and design.
Where do you think the healthcare design industry will head in 2026?
Frazier: 2026 looks like a year of execution and refinement because the market seems to be converging on a few “make-it-real” priorities that are already in motion from late 2025 planning cycles.
Smart rooms will move from pilot to platform. The conversation is shifting from tech-as-amenity to tech-as-workforce and safety infrastructure—virtual rounding, digital whiteboards, remote consults, and AI-enabled monitoring that reduces friction for bedside teams.
Ambulatory growth will drive standardization. With continued site-of-care migration and payer pressure, systems are likely to double down on repeatable outpatient models—“kit-of-parts” prototypes for imaging, endoscopy, infusion, and ASC-adjacent clinics. That supports faster approvals, faster pricing, and easier phasing.
The broader economic signal still points toward growth in physician-office and ambulatory infusion settings. Renovation-heavy capital plans will persist. Many organizations appear to be allocating an increasing share of construction budgets toward renovations rather than pure new build, reinforcing a 2026 emphasis on operational continuity, phased modernization, and surgical upgrades to infrastructure, emergency departments (EDs), and key service lines.
Anne DiNardo is editor-in-chief of Healthcare Design and can be reached at [email protected].
