Joel Swider: Hello, and welcome to the Healthcare Real Estate Advisor podcast. I’m Joel Swider, and I’m an attorney with Hall Render, the nation’s largest healthcare focused law firm. I’m joined today by Vikas Sunkari, Senior Managing Council at SSM Health. Vikas, thanks for joining me today.

Vikas Sunkari: Thanks for having me.

Joel Swider: SSSM, as we’ll hear in a moment, is a large health system with sophisticated legal and strategy departments. So, today I’m excited to learn more and to share with our audience about how SSM handles its real estate as part of its larger M and A transaction and alignment strategy. To start, Vikas, could you give me a bit more background on SSM as a health system?

Vikas Sunkari: Sure. So, SSM Health is a Catholic nonprofit health system. It was initially founded in 1877 by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary. They came from Germany to St. Louis in 1872. Their initial work was, I think, there was a smallpox epidemic going on in St. Louis. So, they were really focused, then, on serving a very vulnerable community. And that mission persists through today. It’s a large part of our identity, and our mission to serve the communities that we’re in, to be present for our communities and our patients. It’s exemplified in our mission statement, which is, “Through our exceptional healthcare services, we reveal the healing presence of God.” Today, SSM has 40,000 employees, about 11,000 providers, and that’s across 23 hospitals and several medical groups that are regionalized in nature in Missouri, Southern Illinois, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. So, that’s our health system in a nutshell. There’s probably a lot more to say, but I think that encompasses a high level overview of what we do.

Joel Swider: Yeah. So, Vikas, how long have you been at SSM Health? And what was your path to your current position there?

Vikas Sunkari: Sure. So, I’ve been at SSM for about seven and a half years. When I came to SSM, just immediately pri