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History

A History in Consulting

Integrated Healthcare Strategies has enjoyed a long and successful history. The original company - known as Phynque, Inc. - was founded in 1958 by its former Chairman, Gary C. Fink. In the early years, the company focused primarily on estate planning and succession planning for family-owned businesses. Over time, Gary grew the organization by adapting and applying the strategies that worked well for these businesses to include small and mid-sized public companies. Phynque, Inc. continued to fuel its success by developing consulting expertise in the design, funding and administration of nonqualified benefit plans for executives.

In 1977, Phynque, Inc. became affiliated with Management Compensation Group. The relationship enabled them to promote their consulting services to a broader and untapped marketplace.

In the early 1980s, Gary identified a market segment - not-for-profit healthcare employers - that clearly needed the same kind of sophisticated compensation and benefit plans as public companies. He also found few other consulting firms in this space as the legal requirements for maintaining tax-exempt status presented unique challenges that most firms were unwilling to undertake.

For Gary, it was full speed ahead. As the client base grew to include more large hospitals and healthcare systems, Management Compensation Group/Phynque, Inc. invested heavily in the legal research and development of benefit plan designs to meet the needs of the healthcare industry.

In the early 1990s, the company changed its name to Management Compensation Group/Healthcare to reflect its now-exclusive focus on hospitals and health systems. Its consulting division expanded to include several nationally prominent health system executives and they strengthened their expertise in executive and physician cash compensation by establishing specialty practices focused on those issues.

In April 1999, the Healthcare Group became a part of Clark Consulting, a nationally recognized consulting firm that develops total compensation programs for executives and other highly compensated employees. In 2001, Management Science Associates (MSA) also became part of the Healthcare group. MSA was a healthcare management consulting firm specializing in employee and labor relations, surveys, and human resource consulting. Established in 1974, MSA had developed unique solutions for solving employee engagement and labor relations challenges utilizing specialized systems and consulting methodologies.

In 2007, AEGON acquired Clark Consulting. As part of the transaction, the Healthcare Group was spun off and acquired by former chairman Tom Wamberg. AEGON also chose to keep the Clark Consulting name. This decision required the Healthcare group to create a new name. The company became Integrated Healthcare Strategies.

In August 2010, IHStrategies separated its consulting practice and benefits funding and administration practice into two separately owned and operated firms.  It’s Executive Compensation and Governance practice continues to provide executive total compensation consulting, including benefits design services, but  no longer funds or administers benefit plans.   IHStrategies continues to provide its full compliment of other consulting services through its four specialty practices;  Executive Compensation and Governance, Physician Services, MSA HR Capital, and MSA Executive Search.  IHStrategies is now under the ownership of Benson Botsford, LLC.

Integrated Healthcare Strategies is now the nation's premier industry specialist, providing healthcare-specific consulting services to a "who's who" of organizations including over 1,200 healthcare providers, 1,800 hospitals and over 700 independent and affiliated medical groups.

Our clients have convenient and direct access to the most comprehensive array of healthcare-specific services available combined with insightful advice from industry professionals. With guidance and expertise from Integrated Healthcare Strategies, clients successfully create the components, build the structure and readily maintain the integrity of total compensation and governance programs critical to long-term success.

Exclusive to Healthcare. Dedicated to People.^℠