Consultancy Services

Description

Mention consultancy and most people get a picture of sharp-suited individuals that come in, upset people, rearrange a few pieces and create the conditions whereby you need to keep asking them back again and again. That’s definitely NOT what Medicology means by consultancy. Medicology consulting marries strategy with practical application, underpinned by an ethos that solutions must work in the on-the-ground reality of today’s services. Perhaps that’s why our strong clinical heritage, coupled with our deep insight into the evolving healthcare landscape puts us in such a strong position to be of genuine assistance.

Medicology helps organisations with challenges involving people i.e. enables the achievement of important goals, strategies, change and outcomes through the people of an organisation in a constructive, collaborative manner. We have confidence in delivering against that promise in even the most challenging circumstances.

Examples of scenarios suitable for consulting support:

• Clinical service reform or improvement
• Workforce re-design
• Achieving positive, collaborative engagement in non-clinical initiatives
• Enabling achievement of targets
• Resolving conflict and resistance
• Designing change to happen with least resistance
• Pathway improvement – patient and internal process
• Reducing sickness and absence
• Devising workforce development programmes
• Installing successful performance management principles
• Achieving cost improvement targets at a service level
• Supporting development of strategy & strategic vision processes

Cost Effectiveness

Central to our whole approach to consulting is the concept of added value. Added value means many different things to many different people but to us it primarily means an absolute commitment to helping you achieve your aims more cost effectively and more quickly than you would have done without us. We go a step further too. Our aim is to help you develop people-related solutions where the combined cost of the solution and us is less than your likely best alternative i.e. better solution + lower cost = better value.

Supervising Other Consultants!

Being people specialists with a strong clinical heritage and extensive on-the-ground training interests means that we are in constant touch with the front line workforce. So, it is not surprising that we continually hear the horror stories of what’s been happening. Sadly, that often involves other management consultants.

Other consultancies may well be truly excellent at devising solutions but so often a brilliant solution is executed in a manner that fundamentally undermines the confidence and morale of the people. This can lead to projects with important intended benefits falling far short of where they need to land simply because of the ‘people’ approach adopted by the consulting firm. This is especially true where that project or solution hits the clinical coalface.

Medicology can advise on the right people approach for whatever strategy is being considered, whether it’s a pathway change or a cost improvement programme. A few hours or days of our people insight can replace months of wading through treacle and avoid a legacy of disengagement that it takes years to put right.

Consulting Approach

The consulting approach consists of the combination of ethos and method. We’ve discussed ethos but to summarise it’s captured by:

• Achievement enabling
• With people, not to them
• Practical and real life
• Cost benefitting
• Better solutions
• Clinically relevant

The method is more flexible because it depends very much on each individual scenario. A typical 10-point approach may be:

1. Receive initial brief or request for help
2. Informal dialogue (yes, talking helps...) to better understand the needs
3. Provide initial thoughts, feelings & perspectives along with the suggested approach
4. Establish and agree measurable, clearly defined, intended outcomes
5. Undertake formal diagnostics appropriate to the challenge
6. Develop solutions consistent with the project aims
7. Refine those solutions so they represent the best and most cost effective solution that delivers 100% or more on the intended outcome
8. Gain a firm commitment to a preferred solution
9. Create a detailed implementation plan with particular attention to any likely people issues
10. Hand over the implementation plan to the client, ensuring that every aspect is fully understood

Sometimes Medicology are also asked to implement solutions (we consult in people issues and we are people & training specialists anyway) and so the latter stages may be adapted under circumstances where we have been retained to devise and implement.

A method is naturally process-orientated but people are people. Our consulting methodology is always applied ‘with’ not ‘to’ and in full, engaged participation with the people it will serve and affect. Building the need for change ahead of change itself is almost always part of our methodology.

Where is consultancy best used?

Besides the list of scenarios already highlighted, we need to examine how best to apply a management consulting approach to healthcare challenges. In actual fact, this is more a question of ‘when’, given that we have comprehensively covered where.

Early!

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of needing consultants to sort out problems that would never have occurred had the right approach been devised in the first place. It’s much akin to bowling headlong into the jungle only to find yourself surrounded by ‘hostiles’ and then deciding that maybe you needed help. At this stage we are talking ‘casualties’ no matter how good the advice is.

Whilst we’re discussing analogies etc, it’s also worth remembering that good old motherly advice “if you’re in a hole, stop digging”. The next best time to apply people-related consultancy is at the first signs of trouble. Digging yourself further in, however well meaning, sometimes just means you’ve got a bigger hole to get out of.

Accessing Medicology Consulting Services

In the first instance contact Andrew Vincent, Managing Director and Head of Consulting
on 07775 646947 or and he’ll be happy to advise you on the best next steps.