Business Continuity Best Practices For Hospitals Affected By M&As

By Henry Martinez, Senior VP of Engineering, Vision Solutions

Last fall, a spate of major merger announcements between hospital systems in the United States was the latest charge in a broader trend of marriages between hospitals and healthcare systems across the country. Mergers in September alone included the following:

• Anthem Blue Cross Vivity announced that it would combine 15 California hospitals from seven hospital systems, bringing competing hospitals under one umbrella.
• Advocate NorthShore Health Partners’ announcement brought together 16 hospitals and created the largest health system in Illinois.
• Vidant Health, Wake Forest Baptist and WakeMed announced they will form a shared services operating company for three North Carolina systems.
• The Puget Sound High-Value Network combination will bring together eight hospitals and 163 clinics under one network.

However, once executives finalize such a deal, the real work begins. Combinations such as these can cause headaches for the surviving entity left managing all of the patient data.  And more importantly, it can create the potential for mix-ups in individual medical information, which can have serious patient-health repercussions:

“How do hospital systems manage huge amounts of patient data when they come together to form a new, combined and more complex healthcare entity?”

“What are the potential patient care implications when data starts moving between heterogeneous systems?”

“What compliance factors must be managed?”

“What is the business risk - reputational, financial, or both - to the new entity if something goes awry?”

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