The Client Challenge
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), its affiliated hospitals, and Lahey Health had a vision: they wanted to build a comprehensive, geographically distributed health system that provided high-quality, lower-cost care. The collective management teams—which later included Mount Auburn Hospital, New England Baptist Hospital, and Anna Jaques Hospital—had significant tasks before them. They needed to navigate a challenging regulatory environment for state and federal approvals, embrace their organizations’ diverse cultures while developing a common culture for the new health enterprise, and pursue speed to value upon merging.
REQUIREMENTS FOR FORMING THE NEW HEALTH SYSTEM:
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Developing a compelling strategic rationale and earning board approvals
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Winning state and federal approvals in a complex, contentious regulatory environment
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Aligning cultures across legacy systems, 13 hospitals, 4,000+ physicians, and 35,000+ employees
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Developing and implementing integration plans for dozens of clinical specialties and administrative functions
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Delivering on the new organization’s promise to patients, communities, and providers on Day One
Navigating to Next: The Solution
With past merger experience, leadership understood the complexity of bringing their vision to reality. They understood that the scale of the undertaking, myriad of stakeholders, regulatory environment, and importance of successful execution all added significant burden to already busy executives and clinicians. Building on the strategic rationale and projected value for patients and the community, Chartis worked with the organizations, their legal teams, and economic advisors to craft regulatory filings and subsequent responses. Chartis launched the Integration Management Office (IMO) to manage the pre/post-close integration planning process and provide facilitative, advisory, analytic, and project management support. The Chartis IMO facilitated more than 30 clinical and administrative “design teams” charged to envision and recommend the optimal future state for the expanded enterprise. We then drafted supporting implementation plans and associated metrics of success. These efforts helped ensure BILH was poised to quickly achieve the goals for the new system with minimized execution risk. The Chartis IMO also helped BILH stand up its internal IMO with tools and trainings to seamlessly transition ownership for the ongoing integration efforts.
