I started my career in the healthcare industry about 10 years ago. Before that, I worked in the information technology industry. I’ve been focused for the past 15 years on consulting services and the last 10 on healthcare providers.
Along with my business partner Gene Scheurer, we started Optimum in 2012. We have built a company that has grown to over 500 consultants servicing about 75 healthcare systems nationwide. Our services include advisory, EHR implementation, training and activation, Community Connect, security, analytics, and managed services.
What consulting services are you finding are most in demand?
I’ve seen the trends and the evolution of service lines over the last 10 years. When we first started the organization, our clients were looking to us for implementation work. Implementation work was the focus and still is. Systems consolidate and form super systems. Clients are updating their EHR platforms and sunsetting old ones. That work continues.
I’m asked all the time, “Is this a short runway? Do you see this ending in the next two years?” I’ve been saying no for 10 years. All our clients are involved in some degree of implementing, optimizing, or upgrading.
Implementation work has been our bread and butter. We’ve been involved in all phases of that life cycle. From advisory services — where we assist clients with the associated cost and planning around implementing their EHR — to the implementation and build work and eventually the go-live and training.
Over the last two years, we’ve been developing services lines to help our clients prepare for the challenges they face in the coming years. The implementation piece is still there, but clients are looking to the future. They’re thinking and planning how to successfully transition to a value-based care model. They’re thinking about analytics. They’re thinking about Epic Community Connect.
Our focus and our value lies not just with providing key resources to support implementations, but working with and advising clients to proactively prepare for the future — regulatory changes, technology innovations, patient-driven healthcare choices, shrinking margins, and much more.
We’re also strongly focused on managed services. Healthcare organizations have spent an enormous amount of capital on implementing their EHR systems and understandably want to protect the investment. They’re finding, however, that the traditional means of supporting their users and systems are both expensive and ineffective. It’s getting hard for them to justify the large operating budgets being allocated for support. We’ve developed a methodology in this area that’s resonating very well with our clients.
Simply put, we do it better and cheaper. In this new space, we know it’s not good enough to say, “We can do this very well in your place, but it’s going to cost you.” We have a methodology and approach that we know allows us to do it better for less. Our leaders aren’t career consultants, but rather people who have demonstrated success and innovation inside healthcare organizations. They know an effective approach to support goes well beyond having staff who know the mechanics of tweaking the inanimate software system. We’re well aware of the expectations and complexities put upon healthcare IT leaders from inside their organizations. Our managed services method brings relief and credibility to the leaders as much as it provides line staff who do the day-to-day work.
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