Message from the President

It’s official. You may have already seen the banners and Tina Freese Decker’s welcome video. Today, Lakeland Health becomes a division of Spectrum Health. It’s an exciting and inspiring time in the history of Lakeland, and you and I are blessed to be a part of it.

Why is that so?

Well, the Lakeland Board members and the Senior Leadership Team, who have been very busy evaluating this integration, are convinced that it will help us better achieve our Quadruple Aim. We are in the business of improving the health of our community, improving the health care that we provide, providing that care at the lowest cost possible, and a being a great place to work. Spectrum Health cares, just as much as we do, about those goals. Our integration will accelerate our progress toward those goals.

I’ve been inspired by the unanimous support from the Spectrum Health and Lakeland Health boards and leadership teams to pursue and complete this integration. And according to the attorneys that helped us through the required due diligence phase of the integration, this has been one of the most collaborative and efficient processes ever. 

As part of the Spectrum Health team, we will have access to resources that would otherwise be very difficult to have on our own. Spectrum Health has a robust platform for providing virtual health care. That will be available to us very soon. They also invest tens of millions of dollars each year in innovation activities to create more effective and patient centered ways to deliver health care. Those solutions will benefit us all.

Our patients will benefit from an integrated network of providers and services. That benefit will, of course, be available to Lakeland team members as soon as we are able to work out the details.

So, what does this mean for you and your job?

You are now part of team of more than 30,000 individuals committed to care for their communities across West Michigan and beyond. You are mission critical today and you will remain mission critical.

For most of us our day-to-day responsibilities will remain the same. For a few of us, we will also take on additional responsibilities across Spectrum Health.

Over the next months and years, you will see the impact of bringing our two organizations together. You’ll be asked to wear, with pride, a new Spectrum Health badge reel. Over time you will receive a new badge, see changes in facility names, and be introduced to standardized policies and procedures. We will also work to create a unified electronic health record.

These are exciting and inspiring times. I have been delighted to be a member of the Lakeland Health team with each and every one of you and am equally delighted to be joining, along with all of you, the Spectrum Health team.

Together we will create more health, provide more hope for the sick and injured, and save more lives.

If you would like to read more of Message from the President, click here