What do firms look for when hiring a healthcare consultant?

Health Care Financial Consultant Jobs

Our Team Shares a Handful of Qualities

While there is no exact template for success in consulting, our team shares a handful of qualities that help make us successful in what we do. The following list contains a few qualities that can help new hires be successful in their new role:

Problem-Solving Skills

Helping clients solve complex problems and develop solutions requires strong intellectual abilities, as well as a practical sense of what works and what does not. If you have the experience, make sure you can talk about instances where you took initiative and the impact of your contribution to solve complex problems.

Teamwork

Consulting is a team-based career, so your ability to work well in teams is incredibly important. We are looking for someone who can work both independently, under their own guidance, as well as someone who engages well with the rest of the team.

Experience

Although new hires are not expected to have vast work experience, it is important to have shown an effort to be involved in applicable life experiences. This may include involvement in internships, extracurricular organizations, and volunteering. It is especially important to communicate the transferable skills gained from these experiences, such as data analysis, presentation skills, or teamwork.

Communication

Communication is essential to a consultant’s success and all consulting firms look for evidence of both written and verbal communication skills. Candidates must be clear and concise, both in client-facing scenarios and when communicating with your team. Your first opportunities to display this skill will be through your resume and initial interview discussions with the firm.

Business Acumen

Consultants work to solve a wide variety of complex business problems. It is critical to understand business fundamentals across different domains such as finance, operations management, and information technology, as we apply this knowledge to help businesses solve complex problems and ultimately achieve their goals.

Personality

Consultants spend a lot of time with their coworkers and clients. The ability to develop strong relationships with each of these groups is maybe the most important skill in this list. Almost all aspects of our job are social: collaborating effectively, appropriately, and professionally with peers, superiors, and clients.

The Value of Revenue in the Hospital Supply Chain

Health Care Financial Consultant Revenue

What is Revenue?

This value lever can be defined as any revenue, rebate or reimbursement generated from a purchased product or service. Revenue is often overlooked by healthcare supply chain due to the department’s traditional focus on reducing costs. However, many products and services provided by suppliers can play a significant role in generating revenue, rebates or reimbursements for the health system.

Key benefits of this value lever include:
  • Financial benefits ranging 5-25% depending on the category
  • Increased revenue and reimbursement when cost reduction opportunities are limited
  • Enhanced supplier or contract rebates
  • Creation of funding to upgrade or expand products and services
Key Opportunity Indicators

Limited Discussion on Any Supply Chain Driven Revenue Opportunities

If your organization is not recognizing revenue as a value lever within supply chain, this may be one of the first signs of opportunity. Once spend categories with potential revenue opportunities are identified, negotiations with suppliers in those categories should include conversations around incorporating revenue or rebates into new arrangements.

  • Client Example: Pathstone worked with a client that received a cost reduction proposal from its release of information (ROI) provider. Though the client was eager to accept the offer, Pathstone understood that the supplier was funding the client’s program with revenue associated with billable patient requests that were not visible to the client. By analyzing program revenues, Pathstone was able to help the client negotiate a revenue share agreement that generated 30% in additional financial benefit to the organization.

Lower Supplier Prices Charged Compared to Market Rates

If supplier prices charged for an outsourced service are lower than what the market typically commands, this is another indication of the potential for hidden revenue opportunities. If the organization’s prices are well below market averages, it may be a sign that the vendor is capturing significant revenue to offset costs of the program being delivered to the client. Further investigation may uncover opportunity for the client to at least share in that revenue. Auxiliary services such as parking and cafeteria are common candidates for these types of evaluations and opportunities.

Shrinking Revenue from Existing Programs

If volume for a revenue generating product or service is decreasing, this may signal the current program needs to be modified to align with the current environment. Decreasing volumes may be caused by unexpected factors such as changes in supplier pricing, evolving market forces impacting demand or new supplier/end-user resistance.

  • Client Example:  Pathstone evaluated a health system’s accounts payable commercial bank card program, which offers a quicker payment platform for the health system’s suppliers in exchange for a rebate paid by the supplier to the health system. Our analysis showed low levels of card adoption by suppliers, translating to lower rebates for the health system. A deeper dive into the data revealed most suppliers were already being paid quickly without the use of the card program. By reconfiguring standard payment terms to exceed the card program, the health system created an incentive for suppliers to adopt the card program and thereby increased card program participation and rebates by 10%.
Key Success Factors

Develop Business Cases

Organizations that utilize a comprehensive business case to evaluate the pros and cons of an in-sourced or outsourced model will increase their chance of success. The business case is a fact-based tool that allows teams to have an open and objective dialogue when selecting the best strategy. For complex categories, engaging third parties to develop business cases can provide market information and objective analysis necessary to make the best decision.

Evaluate Program on an Ongoing Basis

Since costs, quality and performance of programs can change over time, organizations that continuously evaluate make vs. buy opportunities position themselves to generate more value over the long-term. Continuous self-assessment can uncover opportunities resulting from minor improvements in supplier relationships to complete transformations for an organization’s service delivery model. For example, one important question for an organization to ask about an insourced operation is: “What else can we do with these resources?” The opportunity cost of those resources can help identify alternatives that drive more value for the organization. Furthermore, alignment of the service with the organization’s overall mission should be evaluated.

Access to Market Intelligence and Best Practices

Hospitals that have conducted extensive market research are well positioned to evaluate existing outsourced or internal programs. Market intelligence on leading practice cost metrics and performance indicators can be an effective barometer to measure financial, quality and operational performance. Partnering with third party providers that can provide insight on market benchmarks can help an organization set the right targets to measure the competitiveness of existing programs.

Six Ways to Increase Hospital Profitability

Health Care Financial Consultant Improve Hospital Efficiency

Healthcare is an ever-evolving industry

To serve patients and meet business goals, hospitals must adapt to a new landscape, with different technologies, regulations and reimbursement models always appearing. Maximizing profitability and efficiency are two goals that often pose a challenge, as healthcare providers work to balance costs with effective, timely care and innovative services.

Since hospitals can be particularly complex healthcare systems, reaching these goals requires efforts across many parts of the business. Let’s explore some ways to increase profit in hospitals and healthcare systems and boost efficiency.

Understand Revenue Cycle Performance

If you want to find opportunities and areas for improvement, you’ll need to know your revenue cycle on a deeper level. Better data can also help executive team members quickly make informed decisions.

To dive into your revenue cycle, consider implementing revenue cycle analytics. These solutions can turn the raw data into visualizations like graphs and charts and display them in an easy-to-understand dashboard. You can also improve the quality of the data that enters your analytics solution with better reporting tools.

Invest in Healthcare IT Systems

Technology has seen huge advancements in recent years, so if you’re still running on outdated legacy technology, you’re likely missing out on significant profits. Some examples of cost-saving IT initiatives include decision support systems, electronic medical records (EMRs) and computerized physician order entry systems for prescriptions.

These digital technologies could offer significant benefits to hospital profitability. Annual savings from efficiency benefits alone could exceed $77 billion. By improving scheduling and coordination, for instance, a hospital could reduce hospital stays, increase productivity, and nurse administration time.

The safety benefits of healthcare IT can also boost your bottom line. A medication order system could alert physicians to potential drug reactions, helping eliminate adverse events overall. Healthcare IT technology can provide innumerable benefits for disease prevention and chronic disease management, which are becoming especially relevant in value-based care initiatives.

Reduce Readmission Rates

Readmissions are costly for the patient and the practice, and many of them are preventable. By collecting and analyzing data across the continuum of care, such as follow-up care, hospitals can focus on reducing readmission rates. Lower rates can help achieve maximum reimbursements and avoid penalizations from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Properly Negotiate Vendor Agreements

The vendors you work with have extensive training and resources to devote to contract negotiation, ensuring that their company has the upper hand. Hospitals typically don’t have the same kind of resources, which can put you at a disadvantage. Spend some time on training to ensure that anyone making these agreements knows the basics of successful negotiation.

You may also want to consider working with a healthcare consultant. At Pathstone Partners, we come to negotiations prepared to make hospital profit improvements. We might collect data on supplier relationships, out-of-line pricing benchmarks, hospital growth and reimbursement rates to gain the most leverage before meeting with a vendor.

Perform Line-Item Analyses

Your line-item analysis is a key part of understanding your monthly spending. Many hospitals are overpaying. A line-item analysis can provide additional security by confirming that all listed items and invoice pricing are included in the vendor contract and that hourly rates are consistent. Manual analysis is virtually impossible, even for smaller hospitals. Automated line-item analysis is another area where IT investments can help significantly.

Consider a Telehealth Strategy

Telehealth has seen a 38-fold increase from pre-pandemic numbers. Offering these digital service options can open up new revenue streams and expand your reach within a community. Telehealth is especially valuable in rural settings or in areas facing provider shortages, where it can make healthcare possible for people who would otherwise struggle to get to a doctor. Telehealth is also an excellent tool for managing chronic conditions and improving patient relationships.