Issued August 14, 2023 — six weeks before closing, while the transaction is cleared but not complete. That timing shapes the whole document: the most urgent question anybody has cannot yet be answered, and several things that could be said may not be. This plan covers who needs to know what, the weekly reporting cycle in both directions, the individual vendor check-ins, and what happens when something goes wrong between scheduled communications.
The hardest communication problem on an integration program is that the question everyone is actually asking cannot be answered honestly for months. "Do I still have a job" has no truthful answer in August — the analysis has not been done, and before closing it legally cannot be. The failure mode is not silence; it is reassurance that later turns out to be false. One premature "no decisions have been made about roles" that is contradicted in March costs the program every other message it sends for the rest of the year. This plan commits to saying what is known, saying plainly what is not, and giving a date when the unknown becomes known.
Table of Contents
Part I — Approach
Part II — The Cadence
- The Weekly Cycle — Both Directions
- Program and Executive Communications
- Vendor Check-Ins
- Ad Hoc and On-Demand
Part III — Audiences and Failure
1. Objectives and Principles
- Say what is known, and name what is not. "We do not know yet, and we expect to know by March" is a usable answer. "Everything will be fine" is not.
- Bad news travels at the speed of discovery, not at the speed of the reporting cycle.
- No audience learns about a change from its consequences. A member must not discover the acquisition from a denied claim; a provider must not discover it from a rejected submission.
- One version of the numbers. Every report draws from the same source, so the Steering Committee and the workstream see the same figure.
- ⚠ Silence is a message and it will be interpreted. A gap in communication is filled by rumor, and rumor is always worse than the truth being withheld.
2. Stakeholder Information Needs
| Group | What they need to know | What they do not need | Format | Sensitivity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steering Committee | Constraint status, decisions required, synergy against plan | ⚠ Task-level detail — it invites the wrong conversation | Monthly deck, exceptions immediately | Confidential |
| Workstream leads | Dependencies on and from them, plan changes, decisions taken elsewhere | Other workstreams' internal problems | Fortnightly program review | Internal |
| Program team | What changed this week, what is expected of them next | Board-level financial detail | Weekly written status | Internal |
| Cumberland Valley employees | What is decided, what is not, and when it will be | ⚠ Speculation about role outcomes before analysis exists | Town hall, then written | High — see §8 |
| ACME employees | What changes for them, who to contact | Target-side organizational detail | Intranet, manager cascade | Internal |
| Members | Coverage continues, cards, who to call | ⚠ Anything about systems, migrations or dates | Mailed notice, portal, call scripts | Regulated content |
| Providers | Submission channels, payment continuity, contacts | Program schedule | Portal bulletin, network reps | Contractual |
| Regulators | Filings, conditions, material changes | Internal program status | Formal correspondence | Statutory |
| Vendors | Their own scope, timing and dependencies | ⚠ Other vendors' performance, rates or issues | Individual check-in — see §6 | Commercially confidential |
The third column is the one that gets left out of communication plans, and leaving it out causes real damage. Over-communication is not a neutral error — sending a workstream's difficulties to the Steering Committee invites executives into a problem that has an owner and a plan, and sending program dates to providers creates commitments nobody made. Deciding what an audience does not need is as much a part of the design as deciding what they do.
3. Pre-Close Constraints on What May Be Said
| May be said now | May not be said until closing |
|---|---|
| The transaction has been signed and cleared | ⚠ Anything that coordinates pricing, network or market conduct between the two companies |
| Regulatory approvals are progressing | Instructions from ACME to Cumberland Valley staff about how to operate |
| Integration planning is under way | Which systems will be retained or retired, as a decision communicated to staff |
| The intent to preserve care management capability | Individual role outcomes — the analysis is not permitted yet |
Until closing these are two competing companies, and a communication can constitute an antitrust violation even when the deal is certain to complete. The line is not about secrecy — the transaction is public. It is about coordination: two competitors may not align their commercial behavior before they are one company. That makes several perfectly well-intentioned messages unlawful, including a manager telling their team how things will work under the new owner. ⚠ Every pre-close communication to target staff is reviewed by counsel before it is sent, and the Clean Team Protocol governs anything touching competitive information.
4. The Weekly Cycle — Both Directions
Two distinct weekly flows that are easy to confuse and must not be merged. One collects; the other publishes.
| Ref | Flow | When | From → to | Content |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CM-01 | Inbound — workstream status to the PM | Wednesday close | Each workstream lead → C. Tyrrell | Progress against plan, blockers, dependencies raised, decisions needed, changes to forecast. ⚠ Written, not verbal. |
| CM-02 | Inbound — vendor status to the PM | Wednesday close | Each vendor engagement lead → C. Tyrrell | Deliverable status against SOW, resource changes, risks to their scope |
| CM-03 | Outbound — unified program status report | Friday | C. Tyrrell → program distribution | One consolidated report. Constraint status, milestones, risks, issues, decisions taken, what changed since last week. |
The inbound reports are written, and that is a deliberate cost. A verbal update is easier to give and impossible to reconcile — two workstreams describing the same dependency differently is not visible in conversation, and it is obvious the moment both are on a page. The IMO's entire value is seeing across; it cannot see across things it was told.
And there is exactly one outbound report. The alternative — each workstream circulating its own status — produces a program where the Steering Committee, the workstream leads and the vendors are all reading different numbers and none of them knows it. Consolidating is not administrative overhead; it is the mechanism that makes a single version of the truth exist at all.
And there is exactly one outbound report. The alternative — each workstream circulating its own status — produces a program where the Steering Committee, the workstream leads and the vendors are all reading different numbers and none of them knows it. Consolidating is not administrative overhead; it is the mechanism that makes a single version of the truth exist at all.
5. Program and Executive Communications
| Communication | Frequency | Owner | Audience | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workstream stand-up | Weekly | Paired leads | Workstream | Blockers raised, dependencies logged |
| Dependency review | Weekly | C. Tyrrell | IMO + affected leads | ⚠ Cross-workstream only. The meeting that exists because nobody else sees across. |
| Program review | Fortnightly | C. Tyrrell | All workstream leads | Plan status, risks, changes in flight |
| Steering Committee | Monthly | D. Ashmore | Six executives | Decisions, gate approvals, escalations, synergy |
| Board update | Quarterly | D. Ashmore | ACME Board | Synergy against the deal model, material risks |
| TSA service review | Monthly | G. Threadgill | Cheatham Mutual Holdings | Service levels, exit readiness per service |
6. Vendor Check-Ins
Each vendor meets the Program Manager separately. These are scheduled, standing meetings — not escalations — and they run alongside the written weekly status in CM-02 rather than replacing it.
| Ref | Vendor | Cadence | ACME attendee | Standing agenda |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VM-01 | Rutherford Cloud Operations | Every 3 weeks | C. Tyrrell + B. Trammell | Step-down progress, capability transfer evidence, incident review, JIT access log review |
| VM-02 | Two Rivers Talent Partners | Every 3 weeks | C. Tyrrell + T. Vandiver | ⚠ Steward attrition and replacement pipeline, onboarding lead time, quality sampling |
| VM-03 | Gallatin EDI Assurance | Monthly | C. Tyrrell + L. Marchesi | Transaction test coverage, trading partner readiness, defect aging |
| VM-04 | Harpeth Clean Team Services | Fortnightly | C. Tyrrell + P. Marchetti | ⚠ Pre-close only. Protocol compliance and output scope — never the underlying information. |
| VM-05 | Cheatham Mutual Holdings | Monthly | C. Tyrrell + G. Threadgill | Runs as the TSA service review. Service levels, knowledge transfer acceptance, exit readiness. |
| VM-06 | Azure — cloud platform | Quarterly | B. Trammell | Consumption against forecast, reservation posture, support escalations |
Vendors are never met together, and the reason is commercial rather than social. A joint vendor forum means discussing one supplier's delivery problems in front of another supplier who may bid for the same work next year, or who is being paid a different rate for adjacent work. It also destroys candor in both directions: a vendor will not tell you their delivery lead has resigned if their competitor is in the room, and you cannot press them on it either.
The exception that proves it: cross-vendor dependencies — the MSP needing something from the EDI vendor — are brokered through the program rather than in a shared meeting. That is slower, and it keeps the accountability with ACME where the contracts put it.
The exception that proves it: cross-vendor dependencies — the MSP needing something from the EDI vendor — are brokered through the program rather than in a shared meeting. That is slower, and it keeps the accountability with ACME where the contracts put it.
The check-in is for the relationship; the written status is for the record. Both are needed and they do different work. A standing meeting with no written status produces a warm relationship and no evidence — nothing to point at when a deliverable is late. A written status with no meeting produces a paper trail and no early warning, because the things that matter most are said in the pause before someone answers a question. ⚠ The one that gets dropped under schedule pressure is the meeting, and it is the one that surfaces problems while they are still cheap.
7. Ad Hoc and On-Demand
Some communications cannot be scheduled because their trigger is an event. They are still designed rather than improvised — each has a named owner, a window, and a defined audience, so that when the moment arrives nobody is deciding who calls whom.
| Ref | Trigger | Window | Owner | Audience and content |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AH-01 | Anything threatening a rank 1 or 2 constraint | ⚠ Same day | C. Tyrrell | Executive Sponsor directly. Does not wait for the monthly Steering meeting. |
| AH-02 | Vendor raises a delivery risk between check-ins | 48 hours | Engagement lead | PM, then the affected workstream. ⚠ Never held until the next scheduled meeting. |
| AH-03 | A dependency slips onto the critical path | Same day | C. Tyrrell | Affected leads plus the Sponsor if the date moves |
| AH-04 | Regulatory contact or inquiry | 24 hours | R. Cadwallader | General Counsel first, always. Nobody else responds to a regulator. |
| AH-05 | Suspected privacy or security incident | Immediate | L. Braithwaite | Privacy Officer and CISO. ⚠ Statutory clocks start at discovery, not at confirmation. |
| AH-06 | Key person resignation in a retention-covered role | 24 hours | D. Marchbanks | PM and the workstream lead. Triggers knowledge transfer acceleration. |
| AH-07 | Media or market inquiry | Immediate | B. Lundquist | Corporate Communications only. ⚠ No one else speaks, including to trade press. |
Listing these as "ad hoc" is accurate about their timing and misleading about their design. They occur unpredictably; they are not handled unpredictably. The value of writing them down before anything happens is that the decision about who to call is made calmly, once, rather than urgently and repeatedly by whoever notices first. A program that discovers its escalation path during its first incident will discover it badly.
8. Employee Communications
| Moment | Timing | Owner | Message |
|---|---|---|---|
| Announcement | At signing | Both CEOs | The transaction, the rationale, what happens next and when. Delivered jointly. |
| Pre-close holding | Monthly | M. Kessinger | ⚠ Progress on approvals. Explicitly states that role decisions have not been made and cannot be made yet, and why. |
| Day 1 | Closing week | R. Villanueva | What changes today (little), what does not, who to contact |
| Retention conversations | Individually, at closing | Line executives | Held one to one, never in a group setting |
| Organization decisions | As taken | D. Marchbanks | Affected individuals first, always, and before any announcement |
The pre-close holding message is the hardest one to write and the one most worth writing well. It says, in effect: we know what you want to hear, we cannot tell you, here is why, and here is when. That is unsatisfying and it is true — and a program that survives contact with the March decisions is one that never promised anything in September. ⚠ The alternative failure is quieter: saying nothing at all for six months, which reads as indifference and lets the most capable target staff conclude they should look elsewhere while they still have a choice.
9. Member, Provider and Regulator
| Audience | Trigger | Owner | Content and constraint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Members | Regulatory notice periods | T. Ruffalo | ⚠ Content and timing are governed by state insurance rules, not by the program schedule |
| Members — ID cards | Ahead of reissue | C. Hollifield | What arrives, when, and what to do with the old card |
| Providers | Ahead of any submission change | A. Boudreaux | Payer ID, submission channel, remittance changes. ⚠ Never same-week notice. |
| Brokers and employers | Outside selling season | T. Ruffalo | Continuity of service and contacts |
| State regulator | Filings and material change | R. Cadwallader | Formal correspondence only, through General Counsel |
The governing rule for external audiences: nobody learns about the integration from its consequences. A member finding out because a pharmacy cannot verify their coverage, or a provider finding out because a claim rejected, is a communications failure that presents as an operational one — and it will be counted against the program as an outage even when every system worked exactly as designed. The notice is part of the cutover, not an announcement about it.
10. Crisis Protocol
| Category | Lead communicator | Response window | First action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Member data exposure | L. Braithwaite | Immediate | Contain, then notify. ⚠ Statutory clocks run from discovery. |
| Claims processing outage | W. Ferriday | 1 hour | Provider and member-facing holding message inside the first hour |
| Failed cutover | R. Villanueva | Immediate | Command center activates; single spokesperson designated |
| Regulatory action | L. Hollingsworth | Immediate | General Counsel leads. No operational response until legal position is set. |
| Media inquiry | B. Lundquist | Same day | Acknowledge receipt; substantive response only after facts are confirmed |
11. Effectiveness Measurement
| Metric | Target | Method |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly inbound status received on time | 100% | ⚠ A missing status is treated as a red flag, not an administrative lapse |
| Issues raised through cadence rather than escalation | Majority | Ratio tracked monthly. A rising escalation share means the cadence has stopped working. |
| Member and provider inquiry volume after each cutover | Below the pre-agreed threshold | Call center volumes against baseline |
| Target-employee pulse survey | Trend, not absolute | Quarterly, run by HR outside the program |
| Vendor check-ins held as scheduled | Above 90% | ⚠ Tracked because this is the first thing dropped under pressure |
The second metric is the only one that measures whether the plan is actually working. Communications plans are usually assessed on output — reports sent, meetings held, town halls delivered — all of which can be fully satisfied by a program nobody is listening to. The ratio of issues surfaced through routine cadence versus through escalation measures something harder to fake: whether people are using the channels or going around them. A program where everything important arrives by escalation has a communications plan on paper and no communication.
Related artifacts: 1 — Integration Charter · 5 — Clean Team Protocol · 8 — Consulting SOW · 9 — Integration Management Plan · 21 — Vendor & Contract Disposition · 22 — TSA Schedule & Exit Plan · 19 — Retention & Key Talent · 42 — Status Report