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It's coming through a ransomware event, best practices and lessons learned. We talked to the CIO of Sky Lakes Medical Center, CIO for Asante Health and the CISO for Asante Health as well. And we have Matt Sickles, who is a cybersecurity first responder. For Sirius Healthcare and we're gonna go through the ransomware event that Sky Lakes Medical Center experienced.

And the reason Asante is there is 'cause Asante is their community Connect partner. And we're gonna look at the different aspects of this and answer some of your questions. When you registered, you'll have a chance to put your question in there. We'll try to answer as many of them. As we possibly can.

At partner at this week in health it.com. Alright, to today's story. So Intermountain Healthcare and SEL Health announced intent to merge. Let me read you some of the excerpts from this. This is straight off the SEL Health website. So Intermountain Healthcare and SEL Health two leading nonprofit healthcare organizations have signed a letter of intent.

To merge and create a model health system that provides high quality, accessible, and affordable healthcare to more patients and communities in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, Montana, and Kansas. Upon completion of the merger, the combined system will employ more than 58,000 caregivers and operate 33 hospitals.

It will run 385 clinics across six states and provide health insurance. To about 1 million people. Intermountain and SEL Health currently provide services in adjacent areas with no geographic overlap. And then you have the usual quotes from the CEO. We're excited about the merger. We're gonna offer population health to these communities, and there's opportunities to grow.

I'm not sure changing the, the quotes, but you, you could cut and paste these from . Any merger, our ability to serve our communities better, those kinds of things. What else are you gonna say? At this point, you're gonna say, we're excited. We're excited about the opportunities that this provides. Both leaders reiterated that this is an extremely busy time for everyone in healthcare, especially given the resurgence of COVID-19.

As the merger moves forward, the organizations will continue to maintain focus on caregiver and patient wellbeing as a top priority. The merged organizations will serve as a model for Faith-based SCL Health and Secular Intermountain Healthcare Systems to come together to deliver high quality and affordable care.

extending their missions to more people. The resources and expertise of the merch organizations will further extend its mission focused approach to serving patients particularly vulnerable populations and accelerate meeting patient and community needs. The thing I will say is that while I can be cynical from time to time, I believe these two health.

Systems have really put their money where their mouth is. Uh, especially on the Intermountain side. I've seen them talk about addressing health equities, and they are doing a lot of really interesting things across the communities that they serve. So again, I don't think that is lip service, but in some cases I read those things and I, I am a little tainted at this point in my career and I apologize for that.

And Intermountain and SEL Health are committed to excellence in clinical outcomes, quality and safety. And both organizations have a solid operating and financial performance record. Intermountain brings a successful model of value-based care and population health expertise, a robust digital health platform, and an extensive telehealth network.

SCL Health brings expertise in operating and integrated health organization across multiple states with proven success. In competitive markets, the Merge Health systems will be headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, with a regional office in Broomfield, Colorado. Dr. Mark Harrison of Intermountain will serve as the president and CEO of the Merge organizations.

Lydia Montville of SEL Health will remain in her current role during a two year integration and serve as a board member on a new combined board to ensure the integration of the two systems, the newly integrated board of trustees. And leadership team will be selected from both systems under the letter of intent.

And the reason I believe that is because Intermountain Healthcare has a great track record. Is a fantastic operational entity. Strong Balance Sheet has many projects which show a commitment to addressing health equity across their service areas. I think they have a strong population health program that is really exciting.

We're gonna cover it on this week in health. It we, we got to sit down in two different cases, got to sit down with different people who are associated with their population health program, and it's exciting. I like what they're doing with analytics. I like . How they are reaching that community and engaging that community.

So I think there's some really strong things happening there as well. I believe the fact that they have a strong payer and provider organization makes them well situated to address the cost of healthcare, which is often where these fall down historically on the patient side, right? The cost of healthcare goes up and access doesn't necessarily get any better, and I believe in this case, the cost of healthcare could

Get better and the needs of the community could be addressed better in both cases. So again, hope springs eternal at the beginning of a merger. A couple things to consider. This follows a failed merger with Sanford Health. . So nothing is over until it's over. This is a merger with a Catholic healthcare organization, so there will be the whole Catholic maze that has to be threaded with Bishop and church approval, not insurmountable.

And there are many precedents that have already been set that can be followed, but again, it's not over until it's over. That's just one thing to consider. There will be some operational challenges if this goes through. There is a belief among healthcare practitioners that Intermountain's model may not be successful in markets outside of their home market.

Kaiser also has this problem, right? So Kaiser's model has been wildly successful in some market and seems to fall flat in others. Another thing to consider is they have a Cerner EHR strategy, and I'm pretty sure SEL is on Epic. This may be viable for a single merger, but if the strategy is to grow through multiple mergers, they will have to pick a horse, one horse that is, and and that'll be interesting to, to watch, to see how they thread that needle.

For the staff at SEL L. If there's any SEL staff listening to this Intermountain Healthcare, he's clearly the controlling entity in this merger. This means that plans will be made in collaboration, but decisions post merger will be made by Intermountain Healthcare Leadership. I. that leadership may include some additions from SEL, but likely not that many.

This was my experience, at least from the St. Joseph $7 billion health system merger with Providence, 13 billion. Within two years, about 90% of the President's council was gone, and about 50% of the Executive Council of St. Joe's was gone as well. But that's two years post merger. Perhaps this will be different.

Who knows? But that is what I've experienced, not only inside of healthcare, but also outside of healthcare during my career. So my next advice may seem counterintuitive, but it is relax. I. And take it day by day. A a lot can happen pre-merger, and there's a ton of great experience to be had in this process.

It will only increase your value to be a part of it post-merger. It will depend on your role, but you will know a lot more as the plans are developed and your leadership team communicates. Out what the plans are. Keep in mind that SEL will likely run on Epic for at least two years post merger and the potential for that to last much longer.

But if you get a phone call from a headhunter, by all means, take the call, have the conversation, see what else is out there, but don't feel the need to jump ship because there is no need to jump ship. This will take a while. It may not go through. And then there's a whole host of reasons why they would need to keep whatever you're doing within the Health IT organization going.

So keep all that in mind. Don't get too frazzled at this point. I. IT plans. You know, it starts with security. Never connect the networks and systems until you have an agreed upon security framework and practices. Everything is tricky pre-merger, but the tools are much better. We've been building tools for collaboration outside of our health systems for years, and this is where the cloud really shines.

There's just more tools out there than there was. Back when we were doing the merger between Providence and St. Joe's. So a lot of great opportunities there. There's a ton more to talk about with regard to the IT plan and bringing two organizations together. Perhaps what I'll do is I'll take it up with Drex when he comes on the Newsday show.

I. Uh, a week from Monday, and we'll talk about when two organizations merge, how do you bring the security frameworks together and some of those things. But that's all for today. If you know someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com, or wherever you listen to podcast Apple, Google Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, you get the picture.

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