Multi-hospital health systems are commonplace today. In fact, 69.7% of all U.S. hospitals are part of a system.  Furthermore, 91.6% of all hospital discharges occurred in a multi-hospital system according to the AHRQ Compendium of US Health Systems-2017.  Many of these systems stretch the U.S. -- some may be regional in nature crossing state lines while a smaller percentage dominate a single state.  The complexity of a multi-hospital system is staggering.  The countless medical groups of all subspecialties, the sheer number of leaders, the variety of delivery methods/ clinical protocols, and regional nuances, drive variation in cost and quality across the spectrum.  In an effort to minimize the variety and delivery of the same standards in exceptional care, and to hold the similar cost structure; the most successful multi-hospital health systems have adopted a Service Line Management philosophy.  Simply put, Service Line Management within a health system, organizes around clinical disease states for all hospitals, across all [...]