Nick Bardo

It needs to come from our clinicians.

It needs to be driven through our care organization, not through the top-down approach that you might see in terms of the integration of some of the shared service functions, which, again, we did in a collaborative manner.

But at the end of the day, as a care organization, having those ideas bubble up from our clinicians is, from our point of view, a better approach over the years to come.

Planning early and awesome.

Obviously doing that within the rules of the road that come along with doing deals like this, but establishing strategy.

your baseline, starting to establish the leadership team that will be involved.

Rich spoke about first doing no harm in terms of our operations, really setting out a baseline of what financial performance is there, what financial, in addition to financial, what employee satisfaction looks like, what patient satisfaction looks like, and really communicating that and committing to

not backsliding on any of those operational issues that ultimately make us who we are.

I think also staying within the rules of the road in terms of building on the teamwork.

Day one is the first time you can start the integration process truly, building that camaraderie, understanding what some of the hard decisions are going to be after day one and making them quickly and decisively and moving through them, but also doing that in a fair and open way.

clear messaging about what we're trying to accomplish, on what timeline, and communicating that

both up into the organization, to the board, and to hold yourself accountable.

I think a lot of times maybe we might be a little bit too opaque with our governance as an industry, but I think here we set out some clear goals around what the baseline was, what we expected from the integration and why we were doing it, and basically asked them to hold us accountable to those metrics.

And I think in doing that early planning,

You build a lot of trust in the organization.

And I think building that trust through both communication, but also through the planning effort, I think goes a long way if you get into some of the harder decisions you have to make as a leadership team.

I think recognizing that as an organization, we have a lot of high-performing individuals and really helping them understand what their role is.

What is their role in helping us do the things that have always made us great in terms of daily operations?

And then also clearly defining the team that has made up a lot of those folks that used to be in daily operations, but that you're pulling out

to focus on the integration and make it clear to the organization who's focused on integration versus who's focused on running the business that we brought to the table.