A Tale of Penn State

The Penn State Hershey Medical Center was founded on a grant from the Milton S. Hershey foundation and chartered with a mission in health, education, research, and community service. I heard a lot about this mission before I was even given a job offer, and I saw evidence of it in the attitudes of all of the employees I met during my interviews. I didn't hesitate when the offer did come because I admire any company that thinks of itself as more than a business.

At the time I was hired, the Penn State Hershey Medical Center had just completed a merger with another large medical center in central Pennsylvania, the Geisinger Health System. The two cultures were very different and I sensed a lot of friction, but in the months before I'd arrived the worst had shaken out and the goal of becoming a single enterprise was undeniable and clear. Not having prior affiliation, I played neutral and set about bringing the two web infrastructures under a single service model. The Information Technology group as a whole was considered exemplary in unifying the new company, but just as processes began to streamline the cultural tension returned with darker overtones. Just over two years after the hospitals merged, organizational leaders announced that they would now de-merge.

At the core of the disagreement was a question of values. Geisinger's strategy was to leverage the fact that it had both health providers and a health plan in a single organization. This allowed them to control the market, setting the price of health care and determining who would provide it. Geisinger entered the merger only to expand their presence, and took little or no stock in Hershey's efforts involving education, quality, or philanthropy. Like all medical schools, Hershey's College of Medicine cost much more as an operation than it generated in revenue, so executives began to divert capital investments in academics and research to improve the bottom line. The Penn State Board of Trustees saw the writing on the wall, and took a stand. When they didn't get satisfaction, they exercised their authority and dissolved the arrangement.

Despite the significant cost of the failure and the grim prospect of untangling all that had taken so long to bring together, the attitude at Hershey was almost exuberant. Most Hershey employees, including myself, turned down higher offers from Geisinger to stay with an organization they believed in. Geisinger had the upper hand in the de-merger and extricated itself with fewer scars, but new leadership arrived at Hershey to galvanize the feelings of solidarity into a commitment to the organization's higher aims. Renewed, the Penn State Hershey Medical Center continued in earnest towards the goal of being a world class care provider and academic institution.

Geisinger didn't perceive that the greatest asset of the Hershey Medical Center was its reputation, which came in large part from knowledgable and quality conscious staff exercising its values. By ignoring those motivations, Geisinger alienated themselves from Hershey's patient population and staff. Similarly, many software vendors try to maximize profits by teasing out what the market will bear in licensing costs while minimizing support responsiblities. Regardless of sticker price, a given piece of software can easily be a burden more than a blessing. It behooves vendors to instead focus on how to create a better product, serve customers, cooperate with partners, or even contribute back to the community. Otherwise, they run the risk of losing everyone as soon as an alternative materializes. With Mentata Systems, I intend to prove the worth of an enlightened open source business model to generate quality software products that cost only as much as you invest in making them work for you. I give special thanks to Penn State University and the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center for allowing me the opportunity to do so, just as I salute them for sticking with their own high principles.