Hospital systems and Medicare Advantage insurers broke off dozens of contracts in 2026, and each break carries the same practical risk for the patients caught in the middle: a plan card that still says one thing while the network behind it says another. When a system exits a network mid-year, enrollees typically keep their coverage but lose in-network access to the specific doctors and facilities the plan was built around. A health-care trade publication has spent the year keeping a running count of exactly how many systems have made that break.
Becker’s Hospital Review Counts Thirty Breaks in 2026
Becker’s Hospital Review, a trade publication that has tracked these contract breaks since 2023, lists 30 health systems that have lost or ended at least one Medicare Advantage contract in 2026. The publication frames its own list carefully rather than presenting it as a complete census: “This is not an exhaustive list and includes contract breaks effective in or announced in 2026,” its editor’s note reads, meaning the count captures deals ending or announced at any point in the year and keeps being updated as more surface.
The 30 span the country, from academic medical centers to single-hospital rural systems. Among them: Zanesville, Ohio-based Genesis Healthcare System; Fort Myers, Fla.-based Lee Health; Norfolk, Va.-based Sentara Health; Columbus-based Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center; Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic; New York’s Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian; Chapel Hill, N.C.-based UNC Health; and Tacoma, Wash.-based MultiCare, which no longer contracts with any nongroup Medicare Advantage PPO plan in the Puget Sound region. Smaller systems appear on the same list as the household names: Batesville, Ark.-based White River Health, Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Avera Health, and South Kingstown, R.I.-based South County Hospital each dropped an Aetna Medicare Advantage contract during the year, entries that carry the same weight in Becker’s count as a multi-hospital academic system leaving a larger insurer.
What the plan letter does not do: An Annual Notice of Change lists what changed, but never compares the plan against the alternatives on cost, drugs and doctors. Run the comparison in The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit.
Some Systems Walked Away; Insurers Pushed Others Out
The tracker’s verb choice, “lost or ended,” is deliberate, because the 30 entries split on who ended the relationship first. Genesis Healthcare System told Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, Medical Mutual and CareSource in 2026 that its Medicare Advantage contracts with each insurer would terminate at the end of the year without “fair new agreements” in place — the system ending the arrangement on its own terms.
Other systems lost their contract because the insurer did the terminating. Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, The James Cancer Center and OSU-affiliated physicians will go out of network with Humana’s individual Medicare Advantage plans on Oct. 1, even after Humana and the health system separately reached a September agreement that keeps Ohio State in-network for Humana’s Group Medicare and Medicaid members through 2027. Adam Sayer, Humana’s market president, said in the company’s own statement that Humana is “pleased to continue our relationship with The Ohio State University” — language describing the Medicaid and Group Medicare deal that survived, not the individual Medicare Advantage contract still ending Oct. 1. A split outcome shows up too: CarolinaEast Medical Center in New Bern, N.C., exited Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina’s Medicare Advantage network on July 1 while CarolinaEast Physicians stayed in it, a distinction the tracker’s broader verb is built to hold. Tampa, Fla.-based Moffitt Cancer Center illustrates a third pattern: the cancer center went out of network with Aetna Medicare Advantage in December 2025 and then with Humana Medicare Advantage on July 1, two separate exits from two separate insurers counted as a single line in the 2026 tally.
The Count Is Down From Forty a Year Earlier
Becker’s ran the same exercise in 2025, publishing a list titled “40 health systems dropping Medicare Advantage plans” that named 40 separate contract breaks announced or effective during that year, 10 more than the 30 recorded so far in 2026. That earlier list carried a similar caveat of its own: “This is not an exhaustive list. It will continue to be updated this year.”
Several names carried over from one list to the next. Mayo Clinic, NewYork-Presbyterian, UNC Health, Lehigh Valley Health Network, Mass General Brigham, Kettering Health, Montrose Regional Health, Centra Health, St. Luke’s Health System and Iowa Specialty Hospitals and Clinics all appeared on the 2025 tally before reappearing on the 2026 one, typically because a different insurer or an additional plan came off the books on top of the earlier move. Whether 30 marks a genuine slowdown from 40, or simply a running list still being filled in, is not something the tracker itself settles.
What the Breaks Mean During Medicare’s Enrollment Window
Medicare Advantage plans cover more than half of the nation’s Medicare-eligible older adults, according to enrollment data the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services publishes monthly, which is why a single system’s exit can touch a large share of a plan’s local membership at once.
Several of the 2026 breaks land on or near Oct. 1, inside this fall’s Medicare Open Enrollment period. Valley Health System in Winchester, Va., goes out of network with UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage on Oct. 1; NewYork-Presbyterian is set to leave UnitedHealthcare’s network the same day without a new agreement, after several extensions past an original deadline; and Norman Regional Health System in Oklahoma, already out of Aetna’s network since August, adds UnitedHealthcare to that list in October. Other dates fall later: Fairview Health Services in Minneapolis plans to stop scheduling UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage patients starting Jan. 1, 2027, and the University of Miami Health System’s Preferred Care Network plan with UnitedHealthcare is set to lapse in 2027 without a new contract. Enrollees on any of those plans keep their Medicare Advantage coverage regardless of what their hospital decides, but the hospital’s decision determines which doctors and facilities still count as in-network once the new date arrives.
Counting the Contract Exits
Becker’s list makes clear that a Medicare Advantage network is not fixed for the plan year it advertises — a hospital or physician group can exit mid-year, as Valley Health System, NewYork-Presbyterian and Norman Regional Health System are all doing within days of each other this October. Medicare’s fall Open Enrollment period is the one predictable window enrollees have to react to a contract break before the new plan year locks their coverage in place.
The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit is a 42-page decision kit built around a cost calculator spreadsheet that compares plans on cost, drugs and doctors, along with a prescription-by-plan comparison and the Open Enrollment calendar.
See the Open Enrollment calendar and the cost calculator spreadsheet in The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit.
AI-assisted research and drafting; reviewed by an editor.
