Background of two hospitals for merger:

Community Memorial Health System

What originated in 1901 as a single hospital serving its neighbors has grown into a comprehensive healthcare system that touches the lives of individuals throughout Ventura County and beyond. Community Memorial Health System, established in 2005 when Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura merged with Ojai Valley Community Hospital, comprises these two hospitals and 11 family-practice health centers (Center for Family Health) serving various communities within Ventura County.

Our health system is a community-owned, not-for-profit organization. As such, we are not backed by a corporate or government entity, nor do we answer to shareholders. Instead, we depend on - and respond to - the communities we serve. Guiding us on this esteemed mission is a volunteer and diverse Board of Trustees that represents a cross section of leaders in our community, and who govern Community Memorial Health System with a focus aimed on what is best for our citizenry.

The mission of Community Memorial Health System is a continued dedication to provide the finest quality health services in a caring and efficient environment. While at the same time, maintaining our vision of being the regional health system of choice for patients, physicians and employees.We value a collaborative spirit of excellence, compassion, respect and integrity, with an eagerness to be a valued community treasure.

Mission Statement:To Heal, Comfort and Promote Health for the Communities We Serve.

Vision Statement:To be the regional integrated health system of choice for patients, physicians, payers and employees. To be an indispensable community treasure.

Core Values:Integrity, Service, Excellence, Caring and Transparency.

Cottage Health

For over 125 years, our health system has been providing advanced medical care for patients throughout California. Today, our nationally recognized services provide families with the patient-centered care they deserve. In 1888, a group of 50 Santa Barbara women recognized it was time for the growing community to have a hospital a not-for-profit facility dedicated to the well-being and good health of all residents, regardless of one's ability to pay.

Cottage Health is a private, not-for-profit community organization. Our sole purpose is to provide outstanding medical care to the communities we serve. Our mission is to serve our community with excellence, integrity, and compassion. Every day we touch thousands of lives in many different ways, resolute in our mission to put patients first. We take pride in helping our patients get back to living their lives - in the places they love.

Cottage Health is guided by avolunteer board of directorsfrom the greater Santa Barbara community and provides the residents of the Central and South Coast with exemplary health care, continuous improvements in advanced medicine, and a commitment to our communities.

Since its opening on December 8, 1891, when Santa Barbara's population was less than 5,000,Santa Barbara Cottage Hospitalhas provided high quality, community focused care and has operated as a not-for-profit founded, built and supported by the community it serves. Today our hospitals in Santa Barbara, Goleta, and the Santa Ynez Valley provide a comprehensive range of services and are consistently ranked among the most efficiently managed healthcare providers in California.

Together our hospitalsin Santa Barbara, Goleta, and the Santa Ynez Valleyprovide a range and quality of services rarely found in communities of our size, and are consistently among the most efficiently managed healthcare providers in California.

A volunteer board of directors from the community provides strategic direction and fiscal management of the System. Board members are not paid for this service, and they contribute generously to support our hospitals.

Ourmedical staff of more than 600 physiciansincludes specialists in all major clinical areas, many of whom participate in the training and education of some of the top medical residents in the country in our internal medicine, general surgery, and radiology residency programs.

Mission Statement:To provide superior health care for and improve the health of our communities through a commitment to our core values of excellence, integrity, and compassion.

Vision Statement:Cottage Health, through partnership with physicians and our communities, is recognized as a California leader in quality care, safety, patient experience, transparency, cost effectiveness, and community health.

Core Values:Excellence What we do; IntegrityHow we do it; CompassionWhy we do it

The Background:

Two health systems located approximately thirty miles apart have merged to form one regional health system. The boards have decided that there are significant opportunities for the single organization to address the community's needs better and to realize substantial cost savings in the form of supplies, information services, and financial services. The board wants to assess the opportunities to create a leading integrated healthcare organization with physicians as partners, create synergies in operations, and develop regional programs as partners.

Questions:

1) identify the new organization's stakeholder groups (you may not know exactly who they are in name, but you are asked for identification of the group/entity),

2) provide a stakeholder analysis - what they want, barriers they may have against the merger, and ways in which to engage them;

3) a stakeholder communication plan

4) Identify areas of potential conflict and barriers to implementing the merger