HCA Healthcare (HCA) – Healthy Hospital Activity

In Thursday’s JaguarWebinar, during the Q&A session, a client asked about shares of HCA Healthcare. We didn’t have specific channel checks on hand. However, going over research notes on Thursday evening, we happened to come across the following set of checks from KeyBanc’s Healthcare Services team.

More specifically, on Wednesday, KeyBanc would publish their Healthcare Credit Card data, which tracks healthcare-related spending across approximately 2M account holders. These accounts generate >200K transactions at hospitals and physician offices each month, including payments for deductibles and copays.

The data showed that Hospital activity remained healthy in March, with transactions up 7.8% (vs. February: +7.4% and January: +1.8%) inclusive of a 4-5% calendar tailwind. For the full first quarter, hospital transactions were up 5.2%, which was steady with Q4 trends (+4.7%) but slightly below prior 2025 trends (HSD growth). Overall, their data suggests healthcare utilization remains healthy and relatively steady in early 2026. Separately, physician transactions, which can be more volatile, were up 1.5% in Q1, vs. 0.5% growth in Q4.

As the chart below shows, there is a 91% correlation between this transaction data and HCA SS volumes.