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Welcome to this month’s ADVOCATE BRIEF. Time to get out of the boardroom and into the the exam room to understand the challenges real patients are feeling/facing.
Welcome to March 2026…Welcome to the year of the Patient!
Healthcare feels unstable right now because it is. March brings brackets, buzzer beaters, and sudden upsets. Every team claims momentum until the clock runs out. Healthcare operates the same way this month. Washington tightens oversight on drug pricing and employer plans. PBM practices face real scrutiny. Employers search for ways around rising premiums. Advocacy leaders claim progress while patients demand proof. Technology promises efficiency while cybersecurity threats grow louder. I have worked in this arena for more than twenty years, and I can tell you the pressure has shifted.
Boards want measurable outcomes. Patients want tangible change. Regulators want transparency. March forces every stakeholder into tournament mode. Perform under pressure or go home. Who actually delivers value, and who simply fills space on the bracket? This edition breaks down where power moves, where money moves, and where trust either advances or gets eliminated. Keep in mind, the published scorecards are coming from ELAVAY in 2 short months!
POLICY PULSE: POLITICAL
Federal agencies and regulators moved aggressively in February. Advocacy leaders need to track these shifts in real time & translate them into strategy throughout their organizational siloes.
Regulators stopped hinting and started acting. Drug pricing scrutiny escalated. PBMs moved into the spotlight. Enforcement agencies sent a message across the industry. Policy now shapes margin, access, and reputation in real time. If you wait for final rules, you already lost leverage.
Key Insights:
The Department of Labor proposed historic transparency requirements targeting pharmacy benefit managers. The rule aims to expose spread pricing and rebate practices that drive employer costs higher.
Federal enforcement agencies announced one of the largest healthcare fraud takedowns in history, signaling heightened scrutiny across providers and suppliers.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers responded quickly to policy threats around Most Favored Nation pricing and drug reimbursement reform, demonstrating how fast regulatory risk turns into market volatility.
These moves reshape compliance strategy, contracting strategy, and reputation risk. Policy now moves at the speed of headlines. Advocacy and market access teams must anticipate impact before rules finalize.
COST OF CARE: ECONOMIC
The economics of healthcare continue to dominate boardroom conversations.
Employers, insurers & manufacturers all fight over who absorbs rising healthcare costs. Patients continue to feel the consequences. Affordability drives every decision in the system.
Employers search for ways around premium inflation.
PBM economics face exposure - though they find loopholes for every law put in their way to continue to pull their sizable “piece” of the economic pie.
Drug pricing debates inject volatility into forecasting and contracting.
Every dollar has a defender.
Every dollar has a defender and offender crying foul no matter the circumstance. Patients, meanwhile, get stuck on the sideline, inheriting the outcome from the players on the court. Patients absorb this friction when leaders delay true structural reform.
Key Insights
National reporting highlighted workarounds employers use to bypass traditional insurance structures in response to premium inflation.
Ongoing debate around PBM practices intensified as regulators and employers scrutinized rebate flows and formulary design.
Public discussion around drug pricing reform continues to create uncertainty in forecasting and long term contracting models.
Cost pressure forces every stakeholder to choose between margin and mission. Companies that claim patient-centricity must show how they reduce friction in affordability, not simply shift cost elsewhere.
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COMMUNITY LENS: SOCIOCULTURAL
Advocacy credibility sits under a microscope. Data exists. Insight exists. Execution often fails.
Patient voice gained visibility. It still fights for authority. Organizations claim engagement. Few tie insight to measurable execution. Advocacy without operational integration creates fatigue inside the patient community and skepticism in the C suite. Credibility now depends on proof, not intention.
Key Insights:
Multiple Archo posts reinforced a central theme: advocacy teams collect insights but fail to operationalize them inside commercial and clinical functions.
Leaders continue to claim they “listen to patients,” yet few organizations tie patient insight to measurable KPIs.
Industry power players continue to cut back budgets and headcount for patient advocacy and patient engagement teams, leaving the vital patient voice on the sidelines.
Growing frustration inside the patient community reflects fatigue with symbolic engagement and limited follow through.
“At what point will pharmaceutical and biotechnology company leaders finally realize that the end user of their product is not the physician?
They are not the ones having to fill the prescription, store it, and administer or take the medication as outlined by the package insert.
So why is it that we care more about the thoughts of providers, or ‘Key Opinion Leaders’ when we should be worried about ‘Key Advocacy Leaders’ and “Key Patient Leaders!’
Community trust erodes when engagement & advocacy in the industry lacks impact. Organizations that integrate advocacy insights into measurable execution will gain durable credibility. The rest will continue to perform engagement theater.
AI innovation outpaces utilization and patient comfort…
TECH TRENDS: TECHNOLOGY
Innovation advances quickly, even as governance struggles to keep pace. Digital health, AI, and cybersecurity risks now shape both clinical delivery and enterprise risk management.
Innovation accelerates faster than governance. Digital pathways bypass legacy systems. AI influences workflow and care coordination. Cybersecurity risk expands alongside data access. Technology offers scale and efficiency. It also exposes fragility. Leaders must treat digital transformation as infrastructure, not experiment.
Key Insights:
Coverage of healthcare innovation emphasized digital pathways that bypass traditional insurance workflows.
AI and automation increasingly influence care coordination and administrative efficiency.
Cybersecurity and data protection remain critical vulnerabilities amid accelerating digital transformation.
Technology expands access and efficiency. It also exposes fragility. Leaders must invest in governance, interoperability, and security with the same urgency they invest in innovation.
DISCIPLINE WINS CHAMPIONSHIPS:
Momentum favors organizations that act with discipline. Policy will keep evolving. Costs will keep climbing. Technology will keep accelerating. Those forces will not slow down. The advantage will go to leaders who connect advocacy insight to execution, who align pricing strategy with patient access, and who treat transparency as strategy rather than compliance. I built Archo on a simple belief. When you align business performance with patient impact, you win long term. If you want to pressure test your current strategy against these realities, schedule time with us. We will challenge assumptions, surface blind spots, and help you turn patient voice into measurable advantage.
YOUR NEXT MOVE:
On March 9th, we launch the Advocacy Intelligence Diagnostic. The AID gives you a clear, unfiltered view of how well your organization converts patient insight into measurable impact. If you lead advocacy, market access, or corporate affairs, take it. Pressure test your strategy before the market does it for you.
If you care about protecting patient access at a national level, spend time at wethepatients.org. We the Patients continues to elevate real stories from individuals who fight denials and systemic barriers every day. Join our pledge, take part in the national survey allowing us to understand the key issues you need help understanding, and check out the book coming from our co-founder, Matthew Zachary, which can be found here!
If your company needs a credible advocacy partner, explore advocatebridge.org. AdvocateBridge connects organizations with patient advocates who demand accountability and drive outcomes, not performative engagement. We also serve to help patients easily find the support they need. May that be disease-state advocacy groups, professional societies, community-based organizations or independent patient advocates, patients can find a full listing (continuously being built out) at the AdvocateBridge’s website.
Finally, prepare for the next advocacy intelligence data release. The new ELAVAY Benchmark data arrives at the end of April 2026. It will rank, compare, and expose how companies operationalize advocacy across two dozen disease states. If you plan to lead, get ahead of it. If you want to understand how you stack up before the numbers go public, reach out now. Insights will include Advocacy Intelligence, Branding Intelligence, Policy Intelligence, & Corporate Intelligence.
Stay engaged. Stay accountable. Keep the patient at the center.
1 All articles referenced can be found in the February 2026 tab here