What Makes A Consulting Firm Worth The Investment?

When you’re tackling the industry’s biggest challenges, an experienced consulting firm can help ensure success. You will have many options, but these three must-have characteristics can help guide your search for the right firm:

1. Depth and Breadth of Experience
   Healthcare is universally complicated, but each organization faces unique challenges due to local regulations, market forces, and population demographics. Consider seeking a consulting firm with deep and relevant experience that understands your business’s dynamics and can share a proven track record of delivering results in similar circumstances.
    
2. Hands-On Approach
   Ideas are easy to come by, but execution is hard. Great healthcare consulting firms roll up their sleeves, work collaboratively with your team, and deliver results. It’s important that your firm not only know what needs to be done, but how to get it done. Developing project plans, building teams, creating momentum, measuring progress, managing risks, and implementing solutions are just a few things you may want to consider when reviewing the proposed scope of work.
    
3. Passion for Your Success
   Perhaps the most important characteristic of a firm is passion for helping you achieve success. Great healthcare consulting firms want to make a difference and be part of the important work to transform healthcare. They exhibit enthusiasm and excitement at the prospect of working in partnership with you to drive innovation, transformation, and growth. While they bring experience and proven methodologies to the table, they customize them to the work at-hand and to your culture. Ultimately, they are committed to your mission and objectives and put your organization’s best interests first.

KEY CONSIDERATIONS

Now you’re armed with the most important things to look for in a stand-out healthcare consulting firm. Here are some important key considerations to keep in mind through the interview process, to be sure you’re bringing on the right firm for your team.

Smart Methodology
Methodology is a framework, not a rigid course of action. So you may want to look for a firm that understands each approach must be customized to you and your projects. Correctly estimating requirements, design effort, and need for subject matter experts can help position you for success, saving costs and resources.

Team-Building Skills
Consider consulting firms that are confident they’ll be able to work with your team, helping you align stakeholders and senior management with goals and expectations. Strong leadership helps keep processes moving, especially in the healthcare industry, which needs to thrive in a constantly evolving environment.

Precise Decision-Making
The best part of bringing on a consulting firm is that you’ll have a team on board to help guide decision-making. Look for a firm that has the healthcare expertise needed to present decisions clearly, and guide you in quickly making them, so you keep momentum and achieve target dates.

Now that you know what may be expected from a new healthcare consulting firm, it’s time to hire one that ticks all the boxes. If your organization needs the expertise and "know-how" of a firm, we hope you'll include Change Healthcare in the mix of consulting services you evaluate. Our team is comprised of managers and C-suite executives recruited for the knowledge and skills they amassed within provider and payer organizations. We've worked with more than 120 payers, and we’d like to help you, too. Meet our team.