Stakeholder Register — ACME Health / Cumberland Valley Integration

Issued March 10, 2023 — one week after Charter approval. This register identifies nine stakeholder groups whose interests, information needs, and engagement approach differ. Extracted from the Communications Plan, which identifies what each group needs to know; this document adds analysis of their influence on the program, their interest in the outcome, and how the program will maintain engagement throughout the integration lifecycle.

Stakeholder engagement is not about building a coalition or softening resistance. It is about ensuring that stakeholders receive information that lets them make informed decisions, that their concerns are addressed through the right channel rather than festering in silence, and that conflicts surface early enough to be resolved rather than discovered at cutover.

Group	Interest	Influence	Information Needs	Engagement Strategy
Steering Committee	High	High	Constraint status (TSA, Day 1, synergy, cost), decisions required, risks	Monthly executive briefing; real-time escalation for Tier 3 changes or gate decisions. One source of truth: consolidated program status from PM, not separate workstream reports.
Workstream Leads	High	High	Dependencies on other workstreams, plan changes, Steering decisions affecting their scope, escalation outcomes	Fortnightly program review; written status to PM every Wednesday; immediate notification of changes affecting their workstream. Direct access to PM for questions.
Program Team	High	Medium	Weekly changes to the plan, what is expected of them, dependencies they need to work around	Weekly written status summary; weekly team sync call; immediate notification of issues affecting the program. Clear visibility into what changed and why.
Cumberland Valley Employees	High	Medium	What is decided, what is not decided, and when decisions will be made. Their role in the integrated company or their transition plan.	Town halls before and after closing; written announcements pre-close and immediately post-close; role-specific communications for affected groups. Honest communication about uncertainty: "we do not know yet, but we will tell you by [date]."
ACME Employees	Medium	Low	What changes for them in their role, who to contact for questions, how the acquisition affects their organization	Intranet updates; manager cascade briefings; targeted communications for affected teams (IT, Finance, HR). Manager briefings before employee-facing announcements to ensure managers can answer questions.
Members	Medium	High	Coverage continues, identification cards work, who to call, what changes (if anything) in their benefits	Mailed notice to all members; portal and call-center scripts updated; provider communication network to answer provider questions. All member-facing content reviewed by counsel. Nothing about systems, migrations, or implementation details — only what affects them as consumers.
Providers	Medium	High	Submission channels, payment continuity, contacts for questions, changes to authorization or bundling	Network rep briefings; portal bulletin; direct outreach to high-volume providers. Vendor network teams answer questions before they become issues. No program schedule shared with providers — they are told only what affects their submissions and payments.
Regulators	High	High	Filings and regulatory compliance status, material changes to the transaction, conditions and their satisfaction, any adverse findings	Formal correspondence from legal and regulatory counsel; filings on schedule; condition status reports on request; immediate notification of issues affecting regulatory approval or conditions. No program gossip — only formal, documented communication.
Vendors	Medium	Medium	Their own scope, timeline, resource and dependency changes, decisions affecting their deliverables	Individual check-in calls every other week; written status submissions to PM weekly; escalation protocol for scope or resource changes. Vendors are never told about other vendors' performance or issues — commercial confidentiality is maintained strictly.

The engagement strategy is different for each stakeholder because their information need is different. The Steering Committee needs executive summary; the program team needs specifics; members need reassurance that nothing bad is changing. Sending the same message to all audiences is how important information gets lost in translation. The strategy here is intentional differentiation, not one-size-fits-all communication.

Key Principles

Information asymmetry is a risk. Stakeholders who do not know what others know fill the gap with rumor. The safest communication is the communication that travels through all audiences on the same schedule with consistent information.

Silence is a message. A stakeholder who does not hear from the program for two months learns that either nothing is happening (which worries them) or something is happening and they were not told (which worries them more). The cadence in the strategy above exists to prevent silence from happening.

Conflict surfaces in communication. A workstream lead who is frustrated by a program decision may escalate through their line executive, or they may simply do something else and apologize later. The engagement strategy that includes regular check-ins and clear escalation paths surfaces conflict early, when it is still solvable.

Do not confuse engagement with consensus. Stakeholders do not have to agree with program decisions. They have to understand them, and they have to know what they are expected to do about them. Engagement is about clarity, not about building agreement. Some stakeholders will be disappointed by integration decisions; they are entitled to that disappointment. They are not entitled to be surprised.