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Article: Pitfalls to avoid when merging information systems.
- Article from:
- Healthcare Financial Management
- Article date:
- June 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Healthcare Financial Management Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Mergers and acquisitions in the healthcare industry continue at a rapid pace, with 53 percent of America's 5,200 hospitals either merging or affiliating with other hospitals in the past four years.(a) Information systems (IS) functions frequently are merged as well to reduce costs by reducing IS staff redundancies, consolidating data centers to reduce operator costs, increasing group purchasing discounts from vendors, establishing efficient enterprisewide systems and standards, and distributing the cost of strategic IS planning throughout the system.
Unfortunately, however, IS costs sometimes increase following consolidation. Some common pitfalls that can obstruct IS ...