The 2024 OPEN MINDS Mergers, Acquisitions & Affiliations Summit
Many Perspectives: The Keys To Finding Long-Term Success Through MA&A
Don’t miss the only all-day event that brings together a variety of real-world perspectives from industry experts across the country to create a comprehensive look at the key strategies for finding long term success through specialty health care mergers, acquisitions & affiliations.
Despite economic uncertainty mergers, acquisitions, and affiliations (MA&A) are still prominent growth strategies for provider organizations, and many analysts predict the volume of MA&A will continue for two reasons–first that the health care market dynamics are driving organizations to reinvent themselves (which takes capital) and second, that corporations and private equity firms are holding large amounts of capital that need to be deployed. Yet many organizations are left wondering whether they should really dive into an MA&A strategy in hopes of long-term success.
This year’s event will explore the challenges, opportunities, and current market trends that are driving the success of MA&A through in-depth case study presentations featuring executives from leading provider organizations and private equity firms.
* Indicates An OPEN MINDS Leadership & Management Course With Course Hours
2024 Summit Agenda
The State Of MA&A In Health Care
There were a record number of mergers, acquisitions, and affiliations occurring with organizations serving the complex consumer market in 2021 and 2022. And despite questions about whether that trend would continue in 2023, it appears that the pace has remained consistent. When we look at the data, we see that there is a lot of complexity in the consolidation market – who are the players, and what trends are driving the increase in this strategy? This opening session of the summit will focus on:
- Understanding the categories of deals in the specialty provider market
- Market trends that are impacting players in all of the consolidation categories
- Discussion of deals that are changing the nature of the specialty provider market
Joseph P. Naughton-Travers, EdM
Joseph P. Naughton-Travers, EdM, Senior Associate, has more than 30 years of experience in the health and human service field. In this tenure as senior associate with OPEN MINDS since 1998, he has served as lead of dozens of client initiatives, served as editor of OPEN MINDS publications, and is the author of many groundbreaking articles and presentations.
Mr. Naughton-Travers brings to OPEN MINDS a broad range of experiences in private and public sector delivery of behavioral health and social services. He started his career as a behavioral health clinician, working in both child welfare and community mental health clinic settings. Subsequently, Mr. Naughton-Travers held a senior business operations management position for a psychiatric hospital system and its community mental health clinics. Later, he was vice president of a firm specializing in information systems and billing and receivables management for community-based mental health programs.
Since joining OPEN MINDS, Mr. Naughton-Travers has developed business solutions for provider and professional organizations, state and county government, technology companies, and venture capital firms. His primary areas of expertise include strategic planning and metrics-based management, electronic health record (EHR) and technology selection and implementation, operations improvement, and corporate compliance. For the past decade, over half his consulting practice has focused on aiding organizations in technology selection and implementation, including all aspects of strategic technology planning, functional specifications development, request for proposal development, vendor selection, and contracting.
He has written numerous articles, including “Winning the Human Resource Wars: Tried, True and New Strategies for Behavioral Health and Social Service Organizations,” “Five Pillars of Management Competency,” “Data Driven Decision Making: Moving to an Organizational Measurement Culture,” “Survival of the Smartest: What is Your Organization’s Information Literacy IQ?,” and “Strategic Human Resource Management: Aligning Compensation with Employee Performance and Organizational Strategy.” Mr. Naughton-Travers is also a nationally recognized speaker, having conducted hundreds of executive and professional executive training events around the nation.
Mr. Naughton-Travers received his Bachelor’s degree from Miami University of Ohio and his Masters’ of Education in Counseling Psychology from Boston University.
The Culture Challenges In Merging Primary Care & Specialty Care
Integration of primary care and specialty care is a key strategy for providing consumer-centric services, establishing payer preference, and strengthening competitive position in the market. Plus, there are a number of advantages to service integration through merger or acquisition, but a number of surveys suggest that 50% to 75% of post-merger integrations fail because of culture issues. This session will highlight key insights from an organization that successfully integrated primary and specialty care.
In this session, attendees will explore:
- The business model and cultural challenges of integration
- Strategies for identifying and assessing the cultural challenges prior to finalizing the deal
- Proven tactics to incorporate cultural alignment into the merger integration activities
Nathan Fawson
Nathan has served in many roles with Southeast Kansas Mental Health Center since starting with the agency originally as a therapist in 1996. After a brief departure, he returned to SEKMHC as the director from 2001 to 2010. In 2013, Nathan accepted the CEO position. His duties include oversight of all services. However, he feels his most important responsibilities are to inspire and support excellence and resilience within SEKMHC.
Ken Carr
Ken Carr brings over 20 years of finance, technology, data analysis and reporting experience in the health and human service field to OPEN MINDS. He currently ia a Senior Associate with the OPEN MINDS consulting practice. In this role, he served as a subject matter expert in the OPEN MINDS consulting practice where he has led numerous engagements in strategic planning, merger and acquisition prospecting, business process improvement, financial analysis of service lines, and technology selection.
Before joining the OPEN MINDS team, he served as the Chief Financial Officer of The Centers, a community mental health center in Ocala, Florida. In this position, Mr. Carr led a realignment of the organization’s financial management functions. This included revenue cycle management, EHR bill implementation and reporting, cash management enhancement, and strategic financial analysis.
Prior to his role at The Centers, Mr. Carr served as Chief Financial Officer of Guild Incorporated, an organization providing residential and community based mental health services in St. Paul, Minnesota. As CFO, Mr. Carr led the financial, billing, IT, quality, informatics, compliance, and facilities activities. During his tenure at Guild Incorporated, Mr. Carr used his expertise in change management and business process improvement to lead the EHR implementation team, align service data reporting and financial performance, and lead the financial and data capture activities for new service initiatives.
Mr. Carr has also held the positions of Administrative Director and Finance Director at the St. Paul National Testing Laboratory, a biomedical testing facility of the American Red Cross. In those positions he oversaw activities to enhance inventory management, align financial results to industry standards, and improve financial and facilities performance through problem analysis and quality management initiatives. He also was involved in directing human resource functions during laboratory closing near the end of his tenure.
Mr. Carr earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of South Dakota, and a Master of Divinity Degree from Sioux Falls Seminary. He maintains an active CPA license with the State of South Dakota.
Post Lunch Pick Me Up
Join us in the exhibit hall for a fun after-lunch snack break!
Making Non-Profit Mergers Work — A Best Practices Session
Mergers and acquisitions are increasingly common in health and human services but it doesn’t mean that most of them are successful. Across all industries, between 70% and 90% of M&A transactions fail, and a more recent analysis found that 10% of deals are cancelled after they are announced. When it comes to merger success, a strategic approach and robust planning process are essential ingredients.
Join our industry experts as they share their firsthand experience on what it takes to make mergers successful. Attendees will examine the critical components of an effective merger strategy, gain insights on how to best define merger objectives, and what to look for in the right partner. Then, explore the due diligence and pre-merger planning processes, and strategies for overcoming common obstacles during implementation. Attendees will learn how to capitalize on the benefits of a well-constructed preparation process and strategies for actualizing merger objectives through an effective integration plan.
During this session attendees will:
- Examine critical components of a successful merger strategy
- Discover key competencies for pre-merger planning and what it takes to ‘make mergers work’
- Learn best practices for building an effective post merger integration plan and overcoming common challenges with implementation
Luanne Welch
Luanne Welch is President and CEO of Easterseals UCP North Carolina & Virginia, an industry leader supporting 20,000 children, adults & families living with intellectual and behavioral health challenges.
With more than 35 years of non-profit experience, Luanne is recognized as a turnaround leader, reorganizing financially challenged organizations and positioning them for sustained, healthy growth. In addition, she is adept in portfolio management, service line mission/finance analysis, strategic execution and leadership talent development. Mission driven, Luanne is passionate about influencing culture change, promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and developing leaders and teams where employees feel valued, safe and encouraged to use their voices.
Luanne is a successful relationship builder across all stakeholders including the board, staff, volunteers, donors, public and private payers and community influencers. She serves on the Board of Trustees of Benchmarks NC, as Board Secretary of i2i Center for Integrative Health and is Vice Chair of UCP Regional Affiliate Council.
Joseph P. Naughton-Travers, EdM
Joseph P. Naughton-Travers, EdM, Senior Associate, has more than 30 years of experience in the health and human service field. In this tenure as senior associate with OPEN MINDS since 1998, he has served as lead of dozens of client initiatives, served as editor of OPEN MINDS publications, and is the author of many groundbreaking articles and presentations.
Mr. Naughton-Travers brings to OPEN MINDS a broad range of experiences in private and public sector delivery of behavioral health and social services. He started his career as a behavioral health clinician, working in both child welfare and community mental health clinic settings. Subsequently, Mr. Naughton-Travers held a senior business operations management position for a psychiatric hospital system and its community mental health clinics. Later, he was vice president of a firm specializing in information systems and billing and receivables management for community-based mental health programs.
Since joining OPEN MINDS, Mr. Naughton-Travers has developed business solutions for provider and professional organizations, state and county government, technology companies, and venture capital firms. His primary areas of expertise include strategic planning and metrics-based management, electronic health record (EHR) and technology selection and implementation, operations improvement, and corporate compliance. For the past decade, over half his consulting practice has focused on aiding organizations in technology selection and implementation, including all aspects of strategic technology planning, functional specifications development, request for proposal development, vendor selection, and contracting.
He has written numerous articles, including “Winning the Human Resource Wars: Tried, True and New Strategies for Behavioral Health and Social Service Organizations,” “Five Pillars of Management Competency,” “Data Driven Decision Making: Moving to an Organizational Measurement Culture,” “Survival of the Smartest: What is Your Organization’s Information Literacy IQ?,” and “Strategic Human Resource Management: Aligning Compensation with Employee Performance and Organizational Strategy.” Mr. Naughton-Travers is also a nationally recognized speaker, having conducted hundreds of executive and professional executive training events around the nation.
Mr. Naughton-Travers received his Bachelor’s degree from Miami University of Ohio and his Masters’ of Education in Counseling Psychology from Boston University.
Private Equity Investment In The Specialty Care Space: The Formula For Success
With over half of all mergers and acquisitions in the specialty health care market driven by private equity deals, their impact on the market is significant. And there have been a number of lessons learned as equity-funded organizations entered specialty markets and gained rapid growth, and faced a number of challenges – stagnant rates, slow payer implementation of value-based agreements, and competition for staff. This session will feature insights from investors who have a deep understanding of specialty market opportunities and challenges.
Key takeaways of this session include:
- Opportunities for investment in specialty health care services
- Challenges that have impacted specialty provider organizations
- Advantages of establishing economic scale and adapting reimbursement models
Jonathan Morphett
Jonathan Morphett joined Avondale Partners in 2004 to launch its healthcare investment banking group. Today, as an investment banking boutique firm, Avondale Partners provides mergers and acquisitions and financing transaction advisory services to healthcare companies and private equity firms across the U.S. Jonathan has over 30 years of investment banking experience, having completed over 100 M&A advisory, equity and debt transactions.
Prior to joining Avondale Partners, Jonathan was the Chief Financial Officer of Austar United Communications, a publicly traded Australian company, and a managing director of investment banking at Morgan Stanley. Jonathan is the Immediate Past Chair of the Board of Centerstone’s Institute. He is a former board member of the Nashville Health Care Council; a former board member of Friends Life, a non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of people with disabilities; and a “2012 Health Care Hero” award recipient from the Nashville Business Journal. He earned his undergraduate degrees in economics and law from the University of Adelaide, Australia and his MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth.
Ken Carr
Ken Carr brings over 20 years of finance, technology, data analysis and reporting experience in the health and human service field to OPEN MINDS. He currently ia a Senior Associate with the OPEN MINDS consulting practice. In this role, he served as a subject matter expert in the OPEN MINDS consulting practice where he has led numerous engagements in strategic planning, merger and acquisition prospecting, business process improvement, financial analysis of service lines, and technology selection.
Before joining the OPEN MINDS team, he served as the Chief Financial Officer of The Centers, a community mental health center in Ocala, Florida. In this position, Mr. Carr led a realignment of the organization’s financial management functions. This included revenue cycle management, EHR bill implementation and reporting, cash management enhancement, and strategic financial analysis.
Prior to his role at The Centers, Mr. Carr served as Chief Financial Officer of Guild Incorporated, an organization providing residential and community based mental health services in St. Paul, Minnesota. As CFO, Mr. Carr led the financial, billing, IT, quality, informatics, compliance, and facilities activities. During his tenure at Guild Incorporated, Mr. Carr used his expertise in change management and business process improvement to lead the EHR implementation team, align service data reporting and financial performance, and lead the financial and data capture activities for new service initiatives.
Mr. Carr has also held the positions of Administrative Director and Finance Director at the St. Paul National Testing Laboratory, a biomedical testing facility of the American Red Cross. In those positions he oversaw activities to enhance inventory management, align financial results to industry standards, and improve financial and facilities performance through problem analysis and quality management initiatives. He also was involved in directing human resource functions during laboratory closing near the end of his tenure.
Mr. Carr earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of South Dakota, and a Master of Divinity Degree from Sioux Falls Seminary. He maintains an active CPA license with the State of South Dakota.
Growth Through A Multi-State M&A Strategy
Growth is an essential part of financial sustainability strategy. Growth addresses the need for competitive positioning in the changing market and creates opportunities to benefit from economies of scale – access to capital for investment in technology and service line development, acquisition of talent, and lower unit costs. The challenge with growth is that it requires a plan and consistent execution. With the consolidation of national payers and efficiencies from technology, implementing a plan for M&A beyond one’s current state borders can create opportunities – and challenges – for consistent, sustained growth.
This session will focus on the strategy for using M&A to grow impact and revenue, including:
- The advantages of a multi-state merger strategy
- How market expansion decisions drive implementation of the strategy
- The opportunities for driving, or joining multi-state merger opportunities
Joseph P. Naughton-Travers, EdM
Joseph P. Naughton-Travers, EdM, Senior Associate, has more than 30 years of experience in the health and human service field. In this tenure as senior associate with OPEN MINDS since 1998, he has served as lead of dozens of client initiatives, served as editor of OPEN MINDS publications, and is the author of many groundbreaking articles and presentations.
Mr. Naughton-Travers brings to OPEN MINDS a broad range of experiences in private and public sector delivery of behavioral health and social services. He started his career as a behavioral health clinician, working in both child welfare and community mental health clinic settings. Subsequently, Mr. Naughton-Travers held a senior business operations management position for a psychiatric hospital system and its community mental health clinics. Later, he was vice president of a firm specializing in information systems and billing and receivables management for community-based mental health programs.
Since joining OPEN MINDS, Mr. Naughton-Travers has developed business solutions for provider and professional organizations, state and county government, technology companies, and venture capital firms. His primary areas of expertise include strategic planning and metrics-based management, electronic health record (EHR) and technology selection and implementation, operations improvement, and corporate compliance. For the past decade, over half his consulting practice has focused on aiding organizations in technology selection and implementation, including all aspects of strategic technology planning, functional specifications development, request for proposal development, vendor selection, and contracting.
He has written numerous articles, including “Winning the Human Resource Wars: Tried, True and New Strategies for Behavioral Health and Social Service Organizations,” “Five Pillars of Management Competency,” “Data Driven Decision Making: Moving to an Organizational Measurement Culture,” “Survival of the Smartest: What is Your Organization’s Information Literacy IQ?,” and “Strategic Human Resource Management: Aligning Compensation with Employee Performance and Organizational Strategy.” Mr. Naughton-Travers is also a nationally recognized speaker, having conducted hundreds of executive and professional executive training events around the nation.
Mr. Naughton-Travers received his Bachelor’s degree from Miami University of Ohio and his Masters’ of Education in Counseling Psychology from Boston University.