Helping healthcare providers transform performance in labor, external spend, clinical operations, and capital through our unique combination of deep industry experience, advanced analytics, and cutting-edge tools
Our team of physicians, nurses, data scientists, product designers, and system engineers are committed to supporting healthcare providers as they help clients navigate an increasingly complex healthcare landscape. While working to boost their performance, we also help them build the health of their organization to sustain long-term excellence.
What we do
Performance-improvement-opportunity diagnostics
We rapidly diagnose and identify performance-improvement opportunities across labor, external spend, capital, and clinical operations by deploying our proprietary tools and analytical capabilities.
End-to-end supply-chain transformation
We help redesign supply-chain organizations and processes, support contracting to reduce unit cost, identify opportunities to drive out inefficiencies, support implementation of utilization-based initiatives and related clinical-engagement structures, and assist in performance management and capability building to promote sustainability.
Workforce-composition and -spend optimization
We take a holistic focus on labor, recognizing that it is the people in an organization who drive culture and experience, while also ensuring the safe delivery of high-quality patient care. Our experts, proprietary tools, proven transformation approaches, and capability-building focus enable us to support healthcare organizations in a highly tailored way and achieve their workforce objectives, from reducing workforce turnover to optimizing staffing efficiency to empowering clinicians to practice at the top of their licenses.
Capital-expenditure strategy for construction and medical equipment
We support construction projects end to end, including strategic alignment, design, procurement, and execution. Our clients typically save 10 to 20 percent of in-scope capital expenditures while increasing on-time delivery, improving customer experience, and maintaining flexibility. Additionally, we help optimize the process for medical-equipment procurement.
Clinical-operations improvement through technology and analytics
We diagnose, design, and implement changes in clinical-operations models to improve the quality, efficiency, and cost of care across delivery settings (such as emergency departments, operating rooms, inpatient services, ancillary services, outpatient clinics, and ambulatory surgery centers). We help enable rapid improvements in clinical performance through use of our proprietary advanced analytics, performance-management systems, and proven operational toolkits.
Featured capabilities
Our suite of tools and automated analyses rapidly identify opportunities to capture value and track performance. Examples of our tools and solutions include the following:
Labor-diagnostics: Our scalable offering that enables rapid identification of opportunity levers in a hospital’s workforce-management efficiency and effectiveness.
Price optimization: Our suite of supply- and pharmacy-price-leveling analyses helps identify price variability across a system and short-list specific SKUs to reduce unintended variance in price. Its price-leveling visualization enables purchasing executives to monitor price-variation cases regularly.
National Drug Code substitutions: Our advanced-analytics offerings focus on identifying opportunities for health systems to substitute existing choices for lower-cost clinical alternatives.
Examples of our work
Postmerger transformation
We supported a two-year transformation program in a not-for-profit system formed from a merger, with $500 million in value delivered, including a 12 percent reduction in supply and pharmacy spend as percentage of net patient revenue, $100 million savings in operating-expenses-related run rate, and a one-time $100 million capital-expense reduction.
Transformation of a private-equity-backed ambulatory surgery operator
We helped a surgery-center operator achieve a 4 percent overall-spend reduction and a 1 percent revenue-collection increase by establishing a comprehensive baseline from multiple sources through advanced analytics, prioritization of categories with spend-inflation trends to implement control measures, and review of billing practices relative to payer contracts to optimize implant-revenue-cycle management.
Improvement in nurse retention
A hospital system with more than 20 hospitals across multiple states was experiencing a dramatic rise in nurse turnover, which was causing an increase in recruiting cost and contract-labor use. We created a comprehensive program aimed at improving retention in the lowest-performing facilities by some five or six percentage points.
Clinical-operations improvement at a leading academic medical center
A leading academic medical center in the United States faced patient-throughput challenges across several areas of the hospital: the emergency department, inpatient floors, and procedural areas. After conducting a comprehensive diagnostic, we identified opportunities to improve throughput and increase annual margin by around $70 million across the hospital. This involved the potential to decrease the average patient’s total length of stay by around 10 percent, with the ability to reduce wait times in the emergency department by several hours.
Hospital greenfield construction
A large conglomerate was planning a $500 million strategic investment in Asia, including two or three centers of excellence. We ran a complete diagnosis of the health sector at the macroeconomic and business levels and surveyed around 1,000 patients and more than 50 key doctors to create a distinctive value proposition. In parallel, we identified international best-practice opportunities in healthcare-delivery and -research strategy. The company’s management team used that input to determine a holistic capital strategy. Then we codeveloped detailed business designs and architectural plans, incorporating innovative best practices, to support improved quality, better patient experience, and lower long-term operating costs.
Featured experts
Gretchen Berlin
Senior PartnerWashington DC
Leads McKinsey’s work in federal healthcare and civilian agencies at the intersection of operations and social, health, and public...
Dr. Daniel Moskovic
Senior PartnerNew York
Daniel co-leads the firm’s North America Private Equity Practice, focusing on healthcare and serving mid- and large-cap investors....
Drew Ungerman
Senior PartnerDallas
Leads McKinsey’s Social, Healthcare and Public Sector Entities Practice globally and is global co-leader of McKinsey Health...