Penn Medicine's tips for managing and integrating technology after healthcare acquisitions

There’s an old saying: “Culture trumps process.” I’d like to amend this to say, “Culture trumps technology.” While this is obviously a play on words, one does have to seriously consider the culture of organizations that are acquired today in the healthcare space.

This is particularly true if the goal is to standardize on technology platforms and drive operational efficiencies and savings early on in the acquisition process. Underestimating the impact of culture on your technology plans can lead to costly delays and unplanned outages.

We have developed what we call a 3 C’s Approach to managing Information Services that has become a mantra for us. It means: common systems, centrally managed and collaboratively implemented.

I will mainly focus on the common systems piece in this blog, but will also touch on centrally managed as that is one of the keys to achieving the most significant benefits of merging and integrating technology platforms.