Sue Lopardo, Director of Alignment and Customer Service, Northwestern Memorial Healthcare, and Pete Smith, CEO and Co-founder, Impact Advisors, provide an overview of the financial, competitive and other market drivers fueling Merger and Acquisition (M&A) activity in healthcare, and discuss the strategic and tactical IT issues and requirements to be considered at each phase of M&A planning and consummation. Sue and Pete use the Northwestern Memorial Healthcare affiliation with Lake Forest Hospital in 2010 as a case study in strategy, process and lessons learned.