Consulting Careers.

Consultants work in a variety of settings. These include large general consulting firms with many areas of expertise, smaller boutique consulting firms with specialized industry or functional expertise, as well as in-house for singular organizations. Across all sectors, companies use consulting services to improve efficiency, address complex challenges, discover and implement new strategies, and navigate rapidly changing business landscapes. With these needs, the consulting field has grown steadily due to the increasing need for specialized expertise, technological advancements, and globalization.

‘Healthcare consulting’ typically focuses on providing operational, strategic, and financial advice to organizations within the healthcare realm, which includes everything from hospitals, government, pharma, payers, and med device and biotech companies. Factors driving demand for healthcare consulting include increasing healthcare costs, evolving regulatory landscapes, changing patient expectations, technological innovations, and a focus on improving healthcare outcomes.

Key areas of focus for many healthcare consulting firms include:

  • Technology & Digital transformation – working with clients to adopt and adapt to digitization of their systems.
  • Operational Improvement – optimize operational efficiencies, reduce costs, and improve patient care.
  • Strategy & Planning – one of the most common areas of healthcare consulting works to develop growth strategies, market assessments, and building long-term plans for clients.
  • Regulatory Compliance & Risk Management – helping clients understand and meet compliance around health regulations and policies related to things like patient safety, quality of care, and policy compliance.
  • Healthcare Policy & Advocacy – helping clients understand changes to policy on local, national, and federal level.
  • Financial Advising – working with clients to develop revenue enhancement strategies, cost reduction initiatives, financial modeling to improve their financial performance.

Consultants work on a variety of consulting engagements. They research and identify opportunities, evaluate decisions (new offerings, programs, policies, interventions, etc), and generally solve problems for clients. They may also implement their recommendations and act as project managers to see them through.

 

5 Common types of consulting for public health graduates

Types of Companies Types of Work Common Titles Consulting Firms Hiring BUSPH Grads
Hospitals & Health Providers
  • Improve quality, patient safety, & satisfaction
  • Streamline operations
  • New EMR system
  • Reimburse faster
  • Implement patient-centered medical home model
  • Care coordination
  • Analyst
  • Associate
  • Consultant
  • Project Specialist
  • Project Manager:
    • Health IT
    • Revenue cycle management
    • Quality improvement
    • Process improvement
  • Athenahealth
  • COPE Health Solutions
  • Cognizant
  • Deloitte
  • EY
  • Manatt Health
  • PA Consulting
  • PwC
  • Huron
  • RTI Health Advance
Life Sciences: Drug & Device Companies
  • Is there a market?
  • Burden of disease?
  • Better outcomes than competitors?
  • More cost effective than competitors?
  • Are we in compliance?
  • Will new ICD 10 codes hurt reimbursements?
  • Clinical trials – how can we better recruit?
  • Got to market strategies
  • Analyst
  • Associate
  • Consultant / Senior Consultant:
    • Analytics
    • Commercialization
    • Health Economics Outcomes Research (HEOR)
    • Market access
    • Value-based pricing
    • Risk
  • Analysis Group
  • Avania
  • Deloitte
  • Evidera
  • EY
  • GfK
  • IQVIA
  • Precision Xtract
  • PwC
  • Trinity Partners
  • Panalgo
State/Federal Govt & Non-Profit
  • Evaluate government policies or programs
  • Have they improved patient outcomes?
  • Are they cost-effective?
  • Are they equitable?
  • IT strategy & implementation (ie health exchanges)
  • ACO implementation
  • Analyst
  • Associate
  • Consultant
  • Project Specialist
  • Project Manager:
    • Health IT
    • Process improvement
    • Population health & analytics
    • Strategy, Business development
    • Commercialization
    • HEOR
  • Abt Associates
  • Education Development Center (EDC)
  • Health Resources in Action (HRiA)
  • John Snow Inc. (JSI)
    Lewin Group
  • Mathematica Policy Research
  • Public Consulting Group (PCG)
  • RTI International
Developing Countries (Govt & Other Funders)
  • Country, community, or population specific
    Capacity building
  • Strengthen health systems
  • Coordinate with ministries of health and community
  • Implement interventions
  • Monitoring and evaluating programs
  • Improving access via telehealth
  • Often 5+ year engagements
  • Analyst
  • Coordinator
  • Specialist
  • Manager:
    • Supply Chain (logistics, vendor, mgmt, etc.)
    • Program Mgmt (budgets, back stopping, etc.)
    • M&E
    • Business Development (USAID, Gates, etc.)
  • Abt Associates
  • CHAI
  • Chemonics
  • John Snow Inc. (JSI)
  • Management Science for Health
  • Palladium 
  • PATH
  • Pathfinder International 
  • URC

      Note: Often called international development firms

    Internal Consulting Hospitals, Insurance, Life Sciences
    • Commercializing new treatments & services
    • Improving systems & workflows
    • EMR & IT applications, telehealth
    • Evaluate growth opportunities
    • Identify population health strategies
    • Health to me “value” case for life sciences
    • Analyst
    • Consultant
    • Project Specialist
    • Project Manager:
      • Health IT / Informatics
      • Revenue cycle management
      • Quality improvement
      • Process improvement
      • Managed care
      • Integration
      • Value based care
    • Kaiser Permanente
    • Geisinger
    • Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA
    • Point32Health
    • Beth Israel Deaconess
    • Boston Children’s Hospital
    • Mass General Brigham
    • Alnylam
    • Boston Scientific
    • Sanofi

       

      Strategy vs. Management vs. Internal consulting

      Very basically, these are some of the differences between the largest areas of consulting. Please note there are many variations to consulting.

      Strategy Management Internal
      High level difference
        Big picture thinking to make “go or no-go” decisions
        Executing initiatives to ensure success & attainment of strategic goals
        Provide strategic &/or management consulting services to one specific organization
      Types of projects
      • Setting business strategy
      • Competitive assessments
      • Assessing market/product opportunities (e.g. acquisitions, new product due diligence assessments)
      • Pricing & market entry
      • Project management
      • Project delivery- eg acting as part of the client team to increase efficiency reduce costs, or improve performance
      • Org restructuring & other implementation-based initiatives
          Similar projects of strategy or management consultants, but for a specific organization
        General rules of thumb
        • Less travel (mostly essential meetings)
        • Multi-project staffing model (~2-4 projects at a time)
        • Shorter projects (~4-12 weeks)
        • More travel (to facilitate projects & support implementation)
        • Single project staffing model
        • Longer projects (~8 weeks – 1 year)
        • Little/no travel
        • Multi-project staffing model is typical depending on size of projects
        • Timing of projects can vary depending on needs

          Learn more about the consulting landscape




            Dive deeper into applying for consulting roles, general timelines, & what companies look for in interviews & applications