Comment by hahajk
12 hours ago
"Hospitals navigating challenging financial and regulatory landscapes may call on these specialists for advice on strategic planning, cost-cutting, reorganizations, or revenue-boosting initiatives."
I think it's been stated in this thread, and I learned it reading the comments on HN, but consultants are not hired to optimize processes but instead to provide decision insurance. If you take a big risk by yourself and it goes poorly, your job and reputation are on the line. If you hire a consulting firm that advises you take the risk, and report that the risk is properly characterized and understood, and then it goes wrong - well sometimes the best laid plans fall victim to circumstance.
That’s really only a rather small part of the picture.
Hospitals are opex constrained for things that don’t generate revenue. The operations run lean and are focused on operating. There’s no bench in finance or IT or whatever to figure stuff out. Enter the consultant.
Consulting is often tied to capital spend and most importantly they go away when the job is done.
Which immediately begs the question, how do you become one of these faceless people waving vaguely in the air saying "fire a whole lot of people, that should mean you spend less right?"
I submit my thesis. The PE/consultant class. A crust of slime buoyed about on the waves of capital to provide cover for the horrors underneath.
I think you can only get in this position if you're already playing golf with enough CEOs. Over golf the CEO casually mentions he wants to fire 30% of the workforce but he doesn't want the flak. Then you suggest you could write a consulting report on it.
Consultant... Hmm Reminds me of Barney's P.L.E.A.S.E.[1] acronym for Provide Legal Exculpation And Sign Everything.
1: https://youtu.be/ZfWVV533RHE
That’s not the only reason the other reason is these processes and ways of doing things are so bureaucratic and hard to navigate that you actually do need very specialized information from consultants that it’s not easy to come by