What we do
Consulting

 With you, we want to make an impact on health care, make the most of your existing strengths and resources, and we want to leave you with a pragmatic but exciting product that is distinctly yours. 
Once you have been a consulting client of ours, you will always be a client. You can call us 10 years later and we will take your call; we pride ourselves on those long-term relationships and have had many return clients. Our focus now is on work that can be done with very short, high energy and highly focused onsite visits, and remote support via conference calls, webinars, etc. Here are examples of the limited types of consulting projects we take on for full-speed-ahead clients!

Popular flat fee packages
1. GAP Analysis

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Thinking about the next level for your women's or children's services, and the best way to get there?
That's the perfect question for our Gap and Positioning Analysis, particularly if you have a sense you already have "most of the pieces" and you just need some help putting together the various reports and analyses, and prioritizing for the future.

The Gap and Positioning Analysis is a great, quick, and inexpensive way to figure that out, and it will carry you through at least the next two years, if not three. Unless you need a complete, thorough strategic plan from the bottom up, this will suffice for most hospitals and health systems that already have a pretty good base. (If you need an in-depth complete service line strategic plan, just ask us; we know some great people who do that.)

With the GAP Analysis, using your data (yes, we know how to find it, it's there...we promise), our benchmarks, our knowledge of where health care and the service lines need to be, as well as our knowledge of regional differences, you will get a mini-strategic plan...if you can call an 70 +/- PowerPoint report with references "mini." 

Along the way we almost always find low hanging fruit (margin--either increased revenues, improved costs, or both) and easily implementable marketing ideas for positioning both now and in the future. We will also cover physician recruiting and alignment concepts appropriate to your needs, and any other issues and questions you have specific to your system and community.

Sample tables of contents of previous reports (obviously without data or the names of the institutions) are available. Ask us any questions that you might have; these are customized to your needs. The amount of time spent on site (and therefore fees and costs) are based on scope of service, e.g., health system or single hospital, women's, children's, or women's and children's services. 

Questions? 
Unsure if our skills fit your needs?

Much of the time what clients need is a mix of several items--a few conference calls, some type of site visit, and maybe a follow-up calls or leader coaching through a rough patch of change. Again, give us a call or send an e-mail; the first time we talk is free. If we can meet your needs, great. If not, we can probably refer you to someone who can. One way or the other, we will both benefit from getting to know each other!


2. HCI's Rapid Response Team

In the last decade, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) encouraged the implementation of Rapid Response Teams to recognize and act on early symptoms of deterioration in a patient's condition. 
Smart leaders recognize potential problems in a service line as well, and that's a great time to call us. Just as it can in patient care, acting early can save a whole host of problems later in your service line as well. 

The symptoms are the same as they are in patient care. You may see failures in planning--a growing gap between goals and actions. There may be continued breakdowns in communications between administration and service line leadership, or between physician and IDS, hospital or service line leadership. 

More commonly, there is leakage in market share, or loss of a key physician group. 


Whatever the cause, we have seen it before (always!) and we can help turn the issue around. You are not alone, particularly in these very challenging times. 

Give us a call or send an e-mail. The first call is always free. At the very least, even talking it through that first time may help resolve the issue. 


...and more

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Because of our wide range of experience and combined business and clinical backgrounds, we are often asked to review and comment on many different types of documents--particularly those in which there is a need to connect multidisciplinary "dots." Examples are 
  • Service line strategic plans
  • Marketing plans
  • Business plans
  • Physician recruiting plans
  • Program design plans, e.g., OB, Gyn or peds subspecialty programs
  • Proformas
  • Certificate of Need applications
  • Architectural, space and interior design plans
Consulting services of this type are proposed on a flat or "not to exceed" fee basis, the latter meaning that we will notify you if requested services are likely to exceed the estimate before they do so, so that you can make a decision on proceeding. Generally even in unpredictable circumstances we come in under or on budget.