Managing Clinical Care After M&A

Coping with the challenges of mergers and acquisitions has become an essential responsibility for CMOs.

Adapting to the clinical care challenges of mergers and acquisitions is part of doing business for CMOs.

"Getting comfortable working in a shifting matrix and developing the tools needed for change management are critical to being a healthcare leader in this age of modern medicine," says Andrea Fernandez, MD, CMO of the Atrium Health-Wake Forest Baptist Market, which is part of Advocate Health.

Mergers and acquisitions in healthcare have marched forward with a constant drumbeat in recent years. Atrium Health and Wake Forest Baptist Health formed a strategic alignment in 2020.

"Historically, CMOs have been facility-based, [but] their purview has changed dramatically over the past few years," Fernandez says. "With more and more mergers and acquisitions happening, it is important that CMOs adapt to the changing environment in which they lead. To that end, CMOs and healthcare organizations can best consider what integrated care might look like by getting stakeholders at the table from the start."

CMOs play a key role in integrating clinical care after a merger or acquisition, Fernandez explains.

"By understanding best practices at the local level as well as best practices and opportunities at the larger organizational level, CMOs can optimize clinical care by using the best of both worlds while not losing some of the great work that is being done prior to a merger or acquisition," she says.

Creating a unified medical staff allows each facility within a larger entity to have reassurance that the medical staff working at their facility is delivering the same quality of care across all facilities, according to Fernandez.

"One of the great opportunities around working for a larger healthcare entity is the opportunity to create standards among the medical staff," she says. "That ensures a high quality of clinical excellence, both from a quality care and patient safety standpoint."

"When patients go to a larger health system, they want to be sure that they are going to be able to get brand quality across every point of contact," she says. "A unified medical staff allows that to happen, and it allows for efficiency for credentialling and privileging, which can be tedious when done at facilities across a larger market."

Andrea Fernandez, MD, is CMO of the Atrium Health-Wake Forest Baptist Market, which is part of Advocate Health. Photo courtesy of Advocate Health.

M&A and clinical care challenges

Within a merged healthcare organization, Fernandez says, there are enterprise-level expectations that CMOs must balance with local operations.

"When a provider delivers care to a patient, they need to consider what resources they have at their disposal as a merged organization compared to the legacy organization," she says.

EMRs, testing resources, and partnerships with consulting physicians all can change, according to Fernandez.

"Often, these changes are for the better, but sometimes there is a brief window of change management that needs to happen for providers to get to a steady state and deliver excellent clinical care," she says.

Clinicians can rise to these challenges by engaging with leadership and optimizing the tools that are offered to them, Fernandez explains.

"Clinicians are leery of anything new, especially when it involves AI," she says. "However, I can tell you from personal experience that some of the AI tools that we have been empowered with by being part of a larger organization are truly state-of-the-art and have made my ability to care for patients much easier and much more efficient. This allows me to focus on the patient rather than the electronic medical record."

For example, after the merger of Atrium Health and Wake Forest Baptist Health, leadership offered DAX Copilot to all clinicians. The ambient listening technology has been transformative for many clinicians, according to Fernandez.

"DAX Copilot is an AI-enabled solution that partners with our Epic EMR to record my conversation with a patient, then assist me in creating my note within the medical record," she says. "By not having to worry about taking notes while talking with a patient, I am much more able to focus on what the patient is saying, the patient's physical condition, and any body language the patient may be demonstrating during a physical exam."

Simplifying clinician and patient experience after a merger or acquisition

Clinicians have a personal role to play in the simplification effort, according to Fernandez.

"In order to simplify the experience of clinicians in mergers and acquisitions, clinicians need to keep up to date with the changes that are occurring as part of the process," she says. "By keeping up to date with changes, clinicians will not be caught off guard or forced to double up on work."

Clinicians are also essential in simplifying the patient experience after a merger or acquisition, Fernandez explains.

"Understanding the context of how changes are happening is also helpful for clinicians so they can relay these changes to patients and help patients to have a better experience," she says. "Patients rely on their clinicians for guidance as they navigate health systems. If clinicians are up to date and understand the context of any changes, they are going to be better navigators for their patients."

A perfect example of this is the rebranding of patient portals, according to Fernandez.

"If the providers understand the change from one patient portal to another, they can help patients to log in to the new patient portal and help patients to understand the benefits of the new portal compared to the old one," she says.

Fernandez is a member of the HealthLeaders CMO Exchange.

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