In the blink of an eye, the Fairview-Sanford merger talks started and ended.  In case you missed it, here is a fast-forward screenplay of how the Fairview-Sanford merger talks played out.

(Dark stage)

Fairview and Sanford CEOs:   (Unintelligible whispers)

(Stage lights come on)

Minnesota Attorney General :  Hey guys, I heard you’re talking about a merger that impacts lots of Minnesotans.  What’s in it for them?

Sanford CEO:   It’s our destiny to be big and go east.

Fairview CEO:  Mumble, mumble, the talks are only in the early stages.

Minnesota Attorney General:  But what’s in it for Minnesotans?  They paid for that University Medical Center.

Sanford: We’re not feeling welcome.  I declare these merger negotiations  over.

(Curtain falls abruptly)

Okay, so it was a little more extensive than that, but not much.  Take a look at how Sanford Health’s CEO Kelby Krabbenhoft was selling the merger:

“The Twin Cities is the economic engine for the entire Upper Midwest.  Eventually, Sanford’s evolution, Sanford’s growth, was going to engage somebody from the Twin Cities.”

“Nothing’s been this big before and affords us this opportunity. Between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, I don’t think anything’s been this big as a transaction.”

“I think we would find ourselves in the top 10 nationally just on raw profile of what we would create.”

Krabbenhoft’s manifest destiny vision sounds good for his ego and financial bottom line, but, again, what’s in it for Minnesotan patients and taxpayers?

The drama might have turned out differently for Sanford’s tin eared CEO if he at least pretended to care as much about benefiting Minnesotans, and being responsive to Minnesotans, as he did about being bigger:

(Stage lights on.)

Fairview and Sanford CEOs at a news conference:  We wanted to let Minnesotans know that we’re going to be starting some detailed discussions about whether a merger makes sense.

We’re going to be discussing how we can do these 10 things on our handout to benefit Minnesota patients and taxpayers.  We’ll be consulting with the Minnesota Attorney General about legal issues.  We’ll be issuing a public update every week to tell you about how our conversations are going.

If we find that a merger could actually do these 10 things to benefit Minnesotans, we’ll present our ideas to Minnesotans in listening sessions throughout the Fairview service area.

We obviously don’t have details to share today, because the negotiations are just beginning, but we wanted to be very transparent that the exploratory discussions are happening, because we recognize this could potentially have a big impact on Minnesotans.

I promise we’ll tell you more as soon as we know more.  But for now all we really can say is that talks are starting, and these are the 10 things we are trying to do to benefit Minnesotans.

Minnesota Attorney General:  Will Sanford live by the same standards we demand of  other Minnesota health care providers?

Sanford CEO:  Absolutely.  If we can’t play by the same regulatory rules as our competitors and improve things for Minnesota patients and taxpayers, we obviously don’t belong here.

Minnesota Attorney General:  Will the taxpayers who pay for the University of Minnesota Medical Center have their interests preserved?

Sanford CEO:  That’s a must.  Obviously, the devil will be in the details, and that’s what these discussions are for, to hammer out details.  I promise you this:  If the details don’t make sense to Minnesotans, this merger will not happen.  But we think it’s worth a conversation.  We think it’s possible that we might be able to find a way to make the Minnesota health care and medical research environment even better than it already is.  We’ll see.  Stay tuned.

Minnesota Attorney General:  Okay, we’ll be checking in with you to make sure all of that happens.

Minnesota public:  Interesting.  Okay, we’re listening.

(End of Act 1)

The point:  Put the spotlight on benefiting Minnesota patients and taxpayers, not bigness for the sake of bigness.

I’m disappointed that the drama ended the way it did.  Like many Minnesotans I had concerns, but I also had interest.  I wanted to see if there was a way a merger could improve things for Minnesota patients and taxpayers.   But Mr. Krabbenhoft didn’t appear to be interested in engaging in that topic.

Krabbenhoft may be blaming the collapse of the merger talks on Minnesota’s hostile regulatory environment.  To be sure, Swanson proved in the audits of Fairview, Health Partners and Allina that she can be a vigorous regulator.  But compared to those past actions, Swanson was tip-toeing through Sanford’s tulips the last two weeks.  If Krabbenhoft couldn’t tolerate even that initial questioning, this was never going to be a happy home for him.

Rather than blaming Attorney General Swanson, Mr. Krabbenhoft should look in the mirror, because his public relations and government relations was embarrassingly bad.  That, not Attorney General Swanson, is the biggest reason why these merger talks never went far enough to be able to fairly evaluated.

Note:  This post also appeared in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs and MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.