Kim & Tim: Running Through the (Red)Tape Jarrard Phillips Cate & Hancock

Between regulatory hurdles and financial imperatives, getting a hospital merger or acquisition across the line is hard enough. But that’s just the start. A common aim of healthcare mergers is to integrate the organizations involved, yet bringing everyone together is its own jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces are there on the table, but how to bring them together, undergo the difficult change management and create the big picture? Kim Fox and Tim Stewart sit down to discuss the challenges facing mergers and acquisitions after the transaction is closed, the role culture plays in bringing organizations together – or keeping them apart – and how healthcare leaders can best lead through the process.

The conversation today is a segment of a longer one we recorded this week. In fact, we recorded in person, for the first time with all three of us together. However, considering the rapid devolution of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we’re bringing this segment as a standalone episode. We’re seeing a tension and getting questions from hospitals, health systems, healthcare leaders and marketing pros about whether they – or their organization – should speak out about the invasion. And if so, how to do it appropriately. So, we're weighing in on weighing in.
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This week the team shows up to talk NFL. Kim Fox, Tim Stewart and David Shifrin are all football fans so the news of recently-fired Dolphins coach Brian Flores' lawsuit against the NFL and three of its teams caught our attention. The NFL's response left plenty of room for criticism of several ridiculous missteps. There are the underlying issues with race and diversity and hiring practices in the NFL. And then there are the communications errors in the immediate aftermath of Flores filing the lawsuit. As a bonus, we've got a bit of back and forth on Tom Brady's retirement - just how petty is the GOAT? Important note: there's a reference to a recent instance of alleged domestic abuse and sexual assault, so please take that into consideration.

We're back!
Kim Fox is a partner here at Jarrard and heads up our Regional Practice. Tim Stewart is a senior vice president in our National and Academic Practice. Here's what we've got for the conversation today: A quick intro about the Supreme Court's ruling on vaccine mandates, which partly clarified things but also added to the swirl of confusing healthcare laws, guidelines, suggestions and other ideas. That part of the conversation leads into a deeper chat about the pressure on the healthcare workforce, on the nurses and doctors who work inside hopsitals. We've got a pointed nod to some of the poorly crafted, very un-empathetic responses to a powerful video about the nursing shortage from the New York Times. If you've seen it, you know. If you don't go check it out. And then finally, what do we do about it? We look at how hospital leaders can work to turn the ship when it comes to the nursing shortage. What will it take to recruit and retain the caregivers needed going forward? A couple of times in the conversation Kim referenced a new national survey that we just released. It looks at perceptions of healthcare and hospitals among the public and also asks how the healthcare workforce is doing. Check it out at http://jarrardinc.com/january-2022-national-healthcare-survey/

Last week, we did a quick poll of our audience to get your impressions on health misinformation - What the most significant pieces of health misinformation are and the platforms most responsible. We're rolling that feedback together with insight from our team into a special report that will be coming out shortly. Kim Fox, a partner at Jarrard Inc. and our Regional Practice lead helped to push us in that direction, So it was an easy step to get her and VP Tim Stewart, who's from our National and Academic Health System Practice, to riff on the issue. We cover Facebook, vaccines, politics, the difference between misinformation and disinformation, and hard stops. Stay up to date by subscribing at info.jarrardinc.com/subscribe

Buckle up. This is Kim Fox, Tim Stewart and David Shifrin trying to figure out why people don't just take that extra little beat to think about how what they're about to say (or not say) is going to be received by the people hearing it. Check out all the best healthcare communications and marketing, plus a regular roundup of the stories that matter most to healthcare providers today, by subscribing at jarrardinc.com/pod