CommonSpirit Health: Integrating a Merger of Equals

Soon after closing the 2019 merger of Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) and Dignity Health to create CommonSpirit Health, Lloyd Dean and Kevin Lofton -– jointly appointed to the role of CEO – must make several operational and strategic decisions related to the integration of the legacy organizations. As the second largest, non-profit hospital system in the United States, CommonSpirit Health was focused on improving population health and increasing the value of the care it delivered to patients. To achieve these objectives, Dean and Lofton needed to make decisions about the extent to which key activities, such as branding and electronic health records, would be consolidated for all of CommonSpirit Health or allowed to remain as parallel functions attached to the legacy organizations. The case allows for a discussion of issues associated with the process and governance of post-merger integration in complex service organizations, with a particular emphasis on such topics in the context of the health care industry.