Merger Games

Judith Swazey is an independent scholar and an Adjunct Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. Her publications, which have focused on social, ethical, and policy issues in biomedical research, health care, and professional education, include In Sickness and in Health: Social Dimensions of Medical Care (with Ralph Hingson, Norman Scotch, and James Sorenson); Social Controls and the Medical Profession (edited with Stephen Scher); and, with Renee C. Fox, The Courage to Fail: A Social View of Organ Transplants and Dialysis, Spare Parts: Organ Replacement in American Society, and Observing Bioethics.

• Acknowledgements Introduction: "Ethnography Becomes History" The Players: People and Organizations Prologue. "Honoring the Past, Creating the Future." The Last Commencements of the HU and MCP Schools of Medicine and the First Commencement of the MCP&HU School of Medicine Part I. Let the Games Begin 1. Setting the Stage: Hahnemann, MCP, and Allegheny 2. Entering the Merger Arena 3. If At First You Don't Succeed: The Acquisition of Hahnemann 4. "Our Maximum Leader:" Sherif S. Abdelhak Part II. Merger Landscapes 5. Corporate, Higher Education, and Hospital Merger Arenas 6. Merger Patterns: Human and Organizational Upheavals Part III. Merger Games 7. Who and What We Are: Creating an Organizational Image and Identity Chapter 8. Consolidation Calendar: Tasks and Timetables 9. "Merger Guinea Pigs:" The Medical Students 10. Upsizings: Institutional Expansions 11. And Downsizings: Institutional Contractions Part IV. End Games 12.AHERF, AHERF Sat on A Wall, AHERF, AHERF Had a Great Fall 13. Saving the University 14. No One Could Put AHERF Together Again 15. End Games: 2002-2003 References

"Swazey writes a detailed history.... [She] reveals the difficulty of merging the nonprofit, for-profit, and medical education cultures of American health care. She shows how a combination of corporate hubris, ambitious vision, and the sheer complexity of the merger-with its many players and multiple allegiances-doomed it to fail. The book demonstrates on a micro level the complexity of American health care, showing how on-the-ground considerations are driven by larger policy goals. VERDICT...an informative read." -Library Journal