How Mergers and Acquisitions Affect Healthcare Brands

Yext's Head of Industry for Healthcare, Carrie Liken, recently attended the AMGA conference, where she joined thousands of medical groups and health systems across the country to discuss vital tools and strategies for succeeding in the industry today. This series features key industry trends and takeaways from AMGA for health systems to put into practice.

Carrie Liken is Yext's first Head of Industry for Healthcare. In her role, Liken leads all healthcare-related activities, including product and partnership development.

Due to acquisitions and mergers, hospitals and health systems are growing quickly. However, this exponential growth has made it difficult for health systems to communicate changes around their brand — both internally and externally. After a merger occurs, the conjoined health systems will quickly want to be seen as 'one,' with a new identity, list of providers, locations, and more.

There was much discussion at AMGA around how health systems convey their new brand as patients search. Questions included:

• How should health systems communicate brand changes to its providers?
• What about when provider groups are acquired and are now expected to be associated with a new system?
• How do health systems make changes to all brand assets as soon as the rebrand is live?
• How should these changes be communicated to current and prospective patients?

On top of this, data about providers and facility locations post-acquisition tends to be disparate, and is often times listed on multiple search engines, maps, and directories. Managing system name changes as well as provider data online has becomes a much larger nightmare for health systems as they undergo these common rebrands. Marketing teams have to bear the brunt of having to manage this information, and oftentimes don't know where to get started.

If you are dealing with a recent rebrand, here are a few things to consider:

• Where is your data currently housed in your original, pre-merged/acquired system? Do you have access to it? How is it updated?
• How are you currently managing your health system's facility and provider updates?
• Do you have a plan for how you are going to manage the new facility and provider rebrand after the merger/acquisition takes place?

We have many resources to help you get started. Check out our whitepapers, Preventative Care: Maintaining Doctor and Facility Listings Online, and Healthcare's Location Data Crisis: Improving the Mobile Patient's Journey. Learn more about Yext for Healthcare.