Consolidation Negotiations

The hospital I work with has been in talks with a large healthcare system in regards to a possible "consolidation". What that means for me, I've yet to figure out. Will it bring positive change, or negative. My dad worked for many years for a company and when a larger foreign company obtained them, they shut the plant down. Now I know the situation is different with a hospital. They aren't looking to shut us down. Since the surprise announcement in the paper a few weeks ago, I will say that the administrators are trying to keep us informed. (or leading us to believe they are keeping us informed) There was a question/answer session, and 3 e-mail updates have been sent out. I'm trying to remain positive. Maybe we'll all see an increase in our base rates, and maybe better health insurance. There have also been some "interesting" decisions made on the unit I won't get into, but maybe we'll see people running things that make better choices. Something else that has come about since this announcement is in regards to the new building they were planning to build. They planned this new mother-baby unity with LDRP's, higher level nursery, new critical care area. The blueprints are taped up in our report room, construction to add parking is almost complete and they even set up a model of how the rooms will be. Most of us who will be working in the new unit are somewhat concerned with the layout and some of the design. For example, the hallways are the length of a football field with a LDRP at the opposite end of the OR. So, we could have a emergency situation in that room, need to run a patient in a bed 100m to the OR, trying to avoid running over families, etc. Anyway, back to my point: those plans are on hold. They are blaming the economy, and I believe it, but I also think it may have been affected a bit by these talks. I don't know, we'll have to wait and see what happens. If it goes forward, we'll be merged by the middle of next year.