Don’t expect David Speltz to take the money and run. He sold Speltz & Weis to Huron Consulting a year ago. But far from racing off to a golden retirement, the 60-year-old health industry turnaround specialist sees the fun just beginning. “We are now a very large company. This opens up a whole new world of things for me professionally, things I couldn’t even think about doing before. Besides, I’m not a couch potato,” he says.

At Huron, Speltz spends part of his time working directly with clients. The rest he spends talking to the industry at conferences. “I’m getting kind of old. I can relate back to the way things were. I guess I have the perspective of age,” he observes.

For example, despite a pervasive sense of crisis in the healthcare industry, most of it revolving around finance, Speltz sees this as a great time for healthcare patients. “Healthcare can do so much. I had open heart surgery 12 years ago. I’m still alive. Twenty years ago, that wouldn’t have happened,” he points out.

Even from the industry standpoint, he hopes that long-standing problems finally may be addressed. “Thirty years ago, we faced many of the same issues as we do today. There is never enough money. Everybody wants more care than they want to pay for. We haven’t solved those issues yet,” he notes. However, he sees a greater chance for a solution now than at anytime in the past. “We may have hit the point where something finally will happen to improve things because businesses are now complaining that they can’t be globally competitive due to the high cost of healthcare,” Speltz explains. He hopes that the government will get more involved now that business has raised the stakes.

Speltz doesn’t find spending 30 years wrestling with the same problems frustrating. To the contrary, “this is the most dynamic, most interesting, most exciting job I can imagine. It keeps you young and dynamic. And we’re successful at it, so it makes it fun,” he says. As a healthcare turnaround specialist, he feels the same rush as intensive-care nurses or emergency room staff. And the satisfaction from saving a hospital is great.

The worst part of the job, and it is typical of consulting in general, is the travel. “I would like to see a concerted effort to use technology to help us work with clients without so much travel,” says the man who, outside of work, travels with his family around the world chasing solar eclipses for fun.