Camelot or common sense? The logic behind the UCSF/Stanford merger

Many academic medical centers (AMCs) throughout the United States have established their own community-based integrated delivery systems by purchasing physician groups and hospitals. Other AMCs have merged with existing nonprofit community-based delivery systems. Still other AMCs have been sold to for-profit firms. The AMCs at Stanford and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), chose a different strategy: to merge with each other to respond to the unique characteristics of the Bay Area marketplace.