Healthcare organizations are merging or being acquired at a dizzying pace. In this new bi-weekly feature, we take a look at a recent merger or acquisition and explore how the PR and marketing departments fared and what challenges lie ahead.
Who: Harris Methodist Health System (Dallas) and Presbyterian Healthcare Resources (Ft. Worth, Texas)
When: July 1 (effective date)
Total Employees: 15,000 (10,000-Harris Methodist/5,000-Presbyterian)
Effect on PR/Marketing: For both organizations, the merger has not yet affected staffing.
But once the roles of the executive vice presidents are better defined, PR/marketing departments will be carefully looked at. Currently, Presbyterian has a three-tier communications department: media relations (3 people), communications resource center (5 people) and a print shop that handles physician and employee communications, crisis communications as well as presentation materials.
Harris' marketing department (14 people) is trying to streamline its hospital and HMO media buys, marketing plans and collateral presentations to create more unified communications to its stakeholders.
Merger campaign: The two groups have been working together for more than a year. The primary message stresses "the need for change" and focuses on helping employees understand why the merger is a positive move for them.
This message was primarily communicated through its newsletter and supplemented with videos and face-to-face presentations.
Advertising strategy will feature creative that focuses on the mergers' No. 1 position (largest fully integrated system in Texas) and will use commercials and advertorials. The merger campaign has been primarily funded with minimal spending from Harris Methodist's internal communications annual budget of $600,000.
Merger PR/Marketing Challenges:
- Communicating with employees when all of the issues are not clearly defined. Can't adequately answer pressing employee questions about how the merger will benefit them.
- No finalized management structure.
- Resolving different geographic issues. For example, the merger generated more news in Dallas, with minimal coverage in Ft. Worth, so PR efforts were stepped up there.
- Getting both sides to sign off on how best to singularly communicate to stakeholders.
Third-Party Merger Advice: Diane Peterson, president of Houston-based D. Peterson & Associates, a Houston-based healthcare consulting firm that focuses on strategic planning, marketing and customer service, believes that this merger should be fairly seamless.
But it could get really interesting if Baylor Healthcare Systems, the other major not-for profit system in the state merges with Harris Methodist and Presbyterian (as previously rumored), creating a major showdown in the market between an expanded not-for-profit system and the only for-profit system in the market, Columbia Healthcare.
In Peterson's experience with these kinds of mergers, the biggest impact is felt in the staff departments (marketing and finance) rather than the clinical departments (physicians and nursing).
Staff departments are usually consolidated to reduce budgets and eliminate duplication of job titles and functions within a year after the merger becomes official.
Particularly with marketing, the direction becomes more focused on generating managed care contracts, so marketers may find themselves recycled into a new sales force.
"The wise marketer will investigate ways to augment his role in the combined system, it is unrealistic to expect things to stay the same," stressed Peterson.
(Harris Methodist Health System, 817/570-8632; Presbyterian Healthcare Resources, 214/345-8777; D. Peterson & Associates, 713/795-5800)