E29: Connecting the Beams: Integrating Your Rad Onc Network

But today I think I wanted to bring up this topic and you know we all have or may or may not have been a part of it, but it's it's integrating.

Oncology networks, merging institutions or adding new employees and challenges that we may face and opportunities that we can have moving forward and integrating as institutions merge or grow with one another.

Or if you're going to be assimilated by another institution, how has it been adjusting? So, yeah, this is a topic that we've been a part of and wanted to kind of shed light on it.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think integrating multiple sites, you know, it brings a lot of opportunities, but also significant challenges.

And I think we're seeing this more often, not just in radiation therapy, I think throughout healthcare, a lot of bigger centers are becoming bigger.

So it's crucial that we consider the challenges that's out there.

And Jeff, I know, you know, through the years that you worked at Northwell, you have seen a lot of integration, a lot of new institutions coming into the North Pole umbrella.

So you have experience in managing in that sense.

Just to open up before we get into some of the details, when you hear about integration and new, maybe a standalone center is going to come under the same umbrella, what do you think is like the biggest challenge that comes into your mind?

Being the one coming into the umbrella or being the umbrella?

Well, you're the umbrella.

You're going to bring someone else under you.

And now, you know, in terms of integrating them under the bigger umbrella, what do you think from like a leadership standpoint, like what could be the biggest challenge?

I mean, a lot of challenges coming into play.

I mean, first off, it's seeing how operationally, how they got the patients involved in getting them started.

and seeing their operational workflow will work with them and what's been working for us.

So it's either we adjust how we do things or they have to buy into our system.

And you have to see what's best working for us.

I think whenever we started kind of, it's interesting, here's my plug for AMD, because I've spoken to other places that they have, they're part of a network, but they're siloed.

So even though they're part of that health system, they still do their own thing.

They have their own separate machines.

They can't, you know, they don't really talk to each other.

And, you know, it's hard to kind of cross list or even get patient data if they needed some records.

So that in itself is, it could be challenging.