The Payor/Provider Practice creates new solutions to challenges facing health care organizations. We serve payors, including health insurers, health-maintenance organizations, preferred-provider organizations, defined-contribution plans, and pharmacy-benefit managers, as well as providers, including academic medical centers, hospitals and health systems, physician groups, and organizations that offer niche services such as rehabilitation or dialysis. We also work with start-ups and entrepreneurs.

Clients call on us for counsel regarding organization, marketing, and strategy; health care reform; analysis of market trends and epidemiological data. We also help companies find ways to grow and provide strategic guidance, research, and analytical support in launching new products and services.

McKinsey has helped large health plans improve earnings by restructuring back-office operations. Other engagements for payors and HMOs have dealt with organizational effectiveness, health plan strategy and marketing, and executive talent development and retention. We help health insurers and medical malpractice insurers address changing market conditions and develop insurance products for future generations.

For hospitals pressured to deliver financial results, the age of the strategic plan is over. Most providers are determined to achieve performance improvements within existing capacity and financing constraints. Drawing on our experience in other industries, we help clients improve service in key hospital departments using lean-manufacturing techniques. We also assist in recruiting and developing managerial talent. And we counsel on organizational effectiveness and strategic choices around provider-owned health plans and physicians' organizations.

Despite the dot-com bust, more doctors and patients will interact electronically in coming years. Having advised numerous e-health start-ups on strategy, operations, and marketing, our practice knows what consumers and physicians want from the Internet and has broad experience building physician-patient interface businesses. We have also helped regional e-commerce players expand to national scope.