Tenet has recently acquired a new hospital in the metroplex and I have gotten to see some of the early challenges and transitions related to acquiring a new hospital. One key challenge that I have seen is how difficult it can be to gather data from a newly acquired hospital.
Tenet hospitals are required to put together an annual Business Plan to be presented to their regions executives. Although Sunnyvale was only recently acquired by Tenet, the company still had to participate in the process. In order to put together their business plan, a collaborative effort was made between Lake Pointe’s staff and Sunnyvale’s.
Although Sunnyvale does have the ability to run reports and collect data, the data they collect, what they have used it for in the past, and how it is analyzed is very different from what data Tenet hospitals collect and utilize to measure performance and to budget for the upcoming year. As a result of this, finding suitable numbers and determining what portions of the business plan the hospital could and could not answer was time consuming.
After the presentation and corresponding spreadsheets are pulled together, Tenet hospitals present the information to home office. I was able to attend the presentation of the Business Plan to the Central Region Executives and see how the process works. I was interested in hearing the response that would be given to the missing information as well as to what key strategies Tenet executives think are vital for Sunnyvale to focus on going forward. It was a great introduction to how home office is involved in developing and measuring the performance of their hospitals and I was very glad that I was included in the process!
Erin