Between regulatory hurdles and financial imperatives, getting a hospital merger or acquisition across the line is hard enough. But that’s just the start. A common aim of healthcare mergers is to integrate the organizations involved, yet bringing everyone together is its own jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces are there on the table, but how to bring them together, undergo the difficult change management and create the big picture? Kim Fox and Tim Stewart sit down to discuss the challenges facing mergers and acquisitions after the transaction is closed, the role culture plays in bringing organizations together – or keeping them apart – and how healthcare leaders can best lead through the process.

The conversation today is a segment of a longer one we recorded this week. In fact, we recorded in person, for the first time with all three of us together. However, considering the rapid devolution of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we’re bringing this segment as a standalone episode. We’re seeing a tension and getting questions from hospitals, health systems, healthcare leaders and marketing pros about whether they – or their organization – should speak out about the invasion. And if so, how to do it appropriately. So, we're weighing in on weighing in.

As always, please subscribe to Kim & Tim, and be sure to check out all the content from Jarrard Phillips Cate and Hancock, as well.

This week the team shows up to talk NFL. Kim Fox, Tim Stewart and David Shifrin are all football fans so the news of recently-fired Dolphins coach Brian Flores' lawsuit against the NFL and three of its teams caught our attention. The NFL's response left plenty of room for criticism of several ridiculous missteps. There are the underlying issues with race and diversity and hiring practices in the NFL. And then there are the communications errors in the immediate aftermath of Flores filing the lawsuit. As a bonus, we've got a bit of back and forth on Tom Brady's retirement - just how petty is the GOAT? Important note: there's a reference to a recent instance of alleged domestic abuse and sexual assault, so please take that into consideration.

We're back!

Kim Fox is a partner here at Jarrard and heads up our Regional Practice. Tim Stewart is a senior vice president in our National and Academic Practice. Here's what we've got for the conversation today: A quick intro about the Supreme Court's ruling on vaccine mandates, which partly clarified things but also added to the swirl of confusing healthcare laws, guidelines, suggestions and other ideas. That part of the conversation leads into a deeper chat about the pressure on the healthcare workforce, on the nurses and doctors who work inside hopsitals. We've got a pointed nod to some of the poorly crafted, very un-empathetic responses to a powerful video about the nursing shortage from the New York Times. If you've seen it, you know. If you don't go check it out. And then finally, what do we do about it? We look at how hospital leaders can work to turn the ship when it comes to the nursing shortage. What will it take to recruit and retain the caregivers needed going forward? A couple of times in the conversation Kim referenced a new national survey that we just released. It looks at perceptions of healthcare and hospitals among the public and also asks how the healthcare workforce is doing. Check it out at http://jarrardinc.com/january-2022-national-healthcare-survey/

Last week, we did a quick poll of our audience to get your impressions on health misinformation - What the most significant pieces of health misinformation are and the platforms most responsible. We're rolling that feedback together with insight from our team into a special report that will be coming out shortly. Kim Fox, a partner at Jarrard Inc. and our Regional Practice lead helped to push us in that direction, So it was an easy step to get her and VP Tim Stewart, who's from our National and Academic Health System Practice, to riff on the issue. We cover Facebook, vaccines, politics, the difference between misinformation and disinformation, and hard stops. Stay up to date by subscribing at info.jarrardinc.com/subscribe

Buckle up. This is Kim Fox, Tim Stewart and David Shifrin trying to figure out why people don't just take that extra little beat to think about how what they're about to say (or not say) is going to be received by the people hearing it. Check out all the best healthcare communications and marketing, plus a regular roundup of the stories that matter most to healthcare providers today, by subscribing at jarrardinc.com/pod

President Biden came out swinging against social media companies last week saying they were responsible, not just for the misinformation that's being posted on their sites, but also the consequences of that misinformation. Not long after, on CNN and a couple of other outlets, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy backpedaled a bit without exactly absolving the tech companies. So there's politics, social media, digital angst, misinformation and finger-pointing. It's a perfect recipe for Kim Fox and Tim Stewart to jump in.

Spring is here, vaccines are out of freezers and in people's arms, public venues are reopening and Krispy Kreme is handing out free donuts. Meanwhile, the CDC is still telling us to keep our masks on, the headlines look very pre-pandemic (and not in a good way) and new COVID-19 cases are twitching back up. So...are we allowed to be optimistic yet? In the latest with Kim Fox and Tim Stewart, we get real about "Hanxiety" and how far our obligation to others goes. We also talk about how our friends at hospitals and health systems can leverage the trust they have and help push us towards the bright sunny optimism that we're all looking for.

Sometimes the title of a podcast picks itself. Today, our two favorite outspoken insiders, Kim Fox, and Tim Stewart, take on the vaccine rollout. It's been rocky, and there's plenty of blame to go around, but there's still time for hospitals, health systems and other healthcare providers to swerve around the potholes.

We got a great response from on the last podcast featuring Kim Fox and Tim Stewart, so we asked them to come back for another round. In both healthcare and society we felt like there's been a strange tension between moments of optimism/hope and pessimism thanks to the slog of ongoing bad news and now the third surge of COVID-19. So, we asked Kim and Tim to talk about that. They are never people to sugarcoat things, and the resulting conversation is real talk for healthcare providers.