Reasons For Mergers And How They Are Reshaping And Impacting Health Delivery Essay

Baylor Scott & White Health, formerly Baylor Healthcare Systems and Scott & White Health, respectively, merged in October 2013 to become one of the largest healthcare systems in the United States. With a new-shared vision, mission, and values statement, this paper examines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats present in light of this new merger. A carefully considered execution plan is imperative to ensure continuity of exemplary healthcare and a seamless merger of two similar cultures. As stated by Joel Allison, CEO of Baylor Scott & White, “of mergers that fail, probably seventy five percent fail because of culture.” The execution plan presented in the following pages will help this new entity avoid the risk of losing the trust of their patients and the communities they serve, while creating a new culture acceptable by all that provide and receive the healthcare services of Baylor Scott & White Health.

Following an organization announcement in 2015, the healthcare system was divided into four divisions headed by a leadership team of 5 that oversee all the divisions. The second division consists of the 3 regional hospitals associated with the New York Presbyterian system. Often hospitals associated with a healthcare system are hospitals waiting on approval from the city and HCOs involved. The 3rd division consists of NY-Presbyterian physician services. Lastly, the fourth division consists of all the health services that make up the health care system’s community and population health. These services include ambulatory care network sites and healthcare initiatives. As a Highly Reliable Organization, New York Presbyterian keeps track of multiple trends to shift and shape it’s organization for today’s always changing and complex healthcare industry. Through the tracking of consumer healthcare decisions, New York-Presbyterian uses this data to adjust its practices and policies to help patients make the best medical decisions and provide the highest quality of care. Positioned in one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the world, New York-Presbyterian keeps track of it’s competition by monitoring the consolidations of healthcare organizations within their market share. Through this monetization, the healthcare system prioritize its marketing strategy that allows them to sell the unique

On paper, the merger between these two institutions made sense – both institutions were close to one another and competing for diminishing resources. Together they could reduce administrative costs and join forces to negotiate with large insurance companies. The need to create a new culture and dissolve historically existent power struggles were two large tasks that needed to be addressed in order to ensure a successful merger. However, the way in which the merger was organized did not lead to a successful merger. UCSF Health Care did not spend adequate time creating a shared culture in which the two organizations would see one joint organization with shared power (resources).

Back in December of 2015, Kaiser Permanente planned to acquire Group Health Cooperative for 1.8 billion dollars with a proposition to invest $1 billion in new equipment, staff, facilities and research in hope to improve health in Washington state. In the Advisory Board’s article Eyeing growth, Kaiser announces first major acquisition in over a decade it says, “these deals are focused on delivering a better product to

Some hospitals have merged with other healthcare organizations in hopes of providing a more integrated delivery system. However, delivery in many organizations is still quite fragmented leaving many US citizens dissatisfied. According to a 2011 survey conducted by the Commonwealth Fund;

Unfortunately, a lot of things went wrong in the UCSF and Stanford merger which ultimately cost them tens of millions of dollars. For instance, they were projected to save almost $300 million by 2020, when in reality they lost almost $90 million in two years’ time. It didn’t help that reimbursement rates were down at the time and patients were starting to move to lower paying plans. One notable problem from the start was that USHC continued to hire and ended up with 1000 new employees. Additionally, the IT costs for the year 2000 were astronomical to say the least, and the merger expenses were double than what

From 1991 going forward, the health care environment again experienced fundamental changes as a result of the deregulation of hospitals which according to Ingols and Brem (as cited in Swayne, Duncan, and Ginter, 2006) was occurring for the first time in a decade. According to the authors, the impact of the move was immediate. Following the deregulation, the financial viability of most hospitals was

A merger is a partial or total combination of two separate business firms and forming of a new one. There are predominantly two kinds of mergers: partial and complete. Partial merger usually involves the combination of joint ventures and inter-corporate stock purchases. Complete mergers are results in blending of identities and the creation of a single succeeding firm. (Hicks, 2012, p 491). Mergers in the healthcare sector, particularly horizontal hospital mergers wherein two or more hospitals merge into a single corporation, are increasing both in frequency and importance. (Gaughan, 2002). This paper is an attempt to study the impact of the merger of two competing healthcare organization and will also attempt to propose appropriate

Anti-trust laws in the United States have been effectively used to prevent monopolies in industries like telecommunications, oil and gas and computer software. Anti-trust laws are enforced in order to maintain free competition in the marketplace, which generates lower prices and incentivizes the development of high quality products. Today, hospital systems are experiencing an era of heavy consolidation, which include mergers and acquisitions and physician practice buy-outs. According to the Wall Street Journal, hospitals completed 86 merger and acquisition deals valued at $7.9 billion in 2011, which was the most in a decade. Like in other industries, this developing trend in hospital consolidations encourages price fixing and

In the Harvard Business School case study of Intermountain Health Care (IHC), we learned about the efforts made by IHC to adopt a new strategy for managing health care delivery that is focused on improving care quality while simultaneously saving money. Beginning in 1986 as a series of experiments tying cost outcomes to traditional clinical trials, IHC’s approach to delivering care became known as “Clinical Integration” which “referred to both an organizational structure and a set of tools” (Bohmer, 2002). The organizational structure required a departure from the traditional administrative management model to one that “involved administrative and medical

PSHMC before the merger happened. In addition, Penn State staff benefits were better before the

There are many different forms of competition among health care organizations. Some of them are the prices of services, different co-pays someone will have to pay out of pocket, lower premiums, they have to be competitive in the quality of the service in which they perform daily. The health care competition is being advertised every day. The competitive nature of business cause them to reach out to the community. The health care industry has to fight for the approval of the community, the government, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies and of course the stake holders as well as future investors.

Hospitals also compete for physicians by offering more highly trained supportive staff and/or better equipment. Hospitals are more likely to compete for patients by providing more services, better amenities, or discounted prices. There is a strong competition for cutting edge technology and medical talent locally and globally. Hospitals also have to compete for inclusion in insurer’s provider networks. Insurance plans compete for cost to payers, quality of provider networks, credentialing screening, and quality assessment procedures.

For several decades health care has been tied to the economy and with the current downturn we see continued efforts to control and reduce over-head costs. Health care organizations in their effort to become more efficient and address changes in the industry have altered their strategic business plans. Lee & Alexander (1999) researched organizational change in hospitals and their survival, in this paper I hope to discuss their findings and add other examples to validate their conclusions.

Hospitals and health systems in the U.S. are experiencing a remarkable transformation in their business models directed from numerous influences that are projected to ultimately turn the industry around. Pressures include providers troubled with the quantity of services they are responsible for, to providers who concentrate on presenting high-cost services that give emphasis to sustaining healthy populations (Dunn & Becker, 2013).