By John Kelly, CEO, Bluegrass Business Media
Last year saw hospital merger and acquisition deals rise by 12 percent and there isn’t a whole lot of indication that trend is going to change drastically.
In 2011, mergers and acquisitions involving physical medical groups were up 60 percent from the previous year.
No matter how you want to interpret these statistics and no matter what you believe to be the primary drivers behind them, there is little escaping the fact that the healthcare industry continues to change in all sorts of ways and one of those ways is through mergers, consolidations and acquisitions.
What does this mean for IDN Summit attendees? If you’re a provider, it means you may be impacted by these changes, either now or in the future. The IDN Summit’s education program has a lot to offer you in terms of proactively addressing the many changes going on in the industry, including mergers. It also means you have the opportunity to network with peers who are going through—or have gone through—many of the same challenges that you may now be facing.
It’s so much easier to have a conversation with a colleague over a cup of coffee while at the IDN Summit and talk about what exactly it has meant to supply chain operations in his or her organization when some structural change occurred than it is to have that same conversation by picking up the phone and calling someone else in the industry.
There is also a very strong likelihood that one of the healthcare leaders presenting during the education program is going to talk about how change impacted his or her organization and what it meant to them. The chances are very high that with your attendance alone, you are likely to get insight, advice and support from a number of fronts no matter what waters you are trying to traverse.
If you are a supplier, the IDN Summit can make it easier for you to network with new contacts, renew relationships and stay current on changes in the industry, all at one convenient location, saving time and travel resources. The Reverse Expo provides you with that chance to introduce yourself and your company to new contacts. In other situations, you may learn a bit about structural changes that are on the horizon for a prospective client and discuss how it could impact their decision-making process.
Likewise, the education program can be useful in helping you to align your company’s goals with that of the organizations you are targeting, in light of the many changes that are occurring.
I hope you will take the opportunity to put your IDN Summit experience to work for you and your organization by planning to attend the 2012 Fall IDN Summit and Reverse Expo, Sept. 11th – 13th at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. It’s a great way to keep up-to-date, renew relationships, make introductions and stay on top of the sometimes-overwhelming changes that are going on in the industry.
