by Anne Tate
For the Executive War College
Steve Serota
President, Wisconsin Diagnostic Laboratory,
CEO, Atalan
Session:
Leading with the Lab: How Froedtert & ThedaCare Use Laboratory Integration to JumpStart Their Merger and Deliver Immediate Value
When Froedtert Health and ThedaCare launched their combined organization in
January 2024, leadership faced a familiar challenge following large health system
mergers: how do you demonstrate progress early while the broader enterprise is
still aligning?
Rather than waiting for a prolonged integration timeline, the new organization
made a decisive choice to start with the laboratory. By integrating laboratory
operations first, the enterprise was able to create momentum and show tangible
results early in the merger process.
Steve Serota, President of Wisconsin Diagnostic Laboratories and Chief
Laboratory Officer, Froedtert ThedaCare Health, explains the strategy:
“We wanted to create immediate clinical, operational, and financial value and
leading with the lab was ideal choice.”
This case study demonstrates how focused leadership, digital data transformation,
and diagnostic platform consolidation can position the laboratory as a strategic
driver of enterprise alignment during the earliest phase of a merger.
In this session, attendees will:
- Learn how Froedtert and ThedaCare used laboratory integration as the first move to accelerate progress following their merger.
- See how integrating LIS environments enabled seamless data flow and faster clinical alignment across acute, ambulatory, and reference services.
- Walk away with a proven playbook for using laboratory-led digital transformation to deliver early, credible proof points in large-scale health system integrations.
- Designed for health system C-suite executives, savvy laboratory administrators, and clinical leaders, this session offers a real-world blueprint for using the laboratory to move first, move fast, and prove merger value early.
Join us at Executive War College 2026 to see how laboratory-led integration can
turn
The Ultimate Event for Helping Solve Your Diagnostics, Clinical Lab and Pathology Management Challenges
Executive War College is the world’s largest event focused exclusively on the management of medical laboratories. In 2025, more than 1,100 lab executives and pathologists attended this high-energy event to learn, connect, and collaborate. The Executive War College (EWC) is the greatest goldmine of easy to implement, practical solutions for the modern clinical laboratory.
The healthcare landscape is always changing so it’s critical to stay informed. If you’ve attended Executive War College in the past, you know how valuable the experience is to your business, and if you haven’t attended, we welcome you to join hundreds of your peers at the best and the largest Clinical Lab management event of the year!
