In November, John Nackel was named CEO and executive vice president of Ingenix Consulting, a 1,000-person firm providing services focused on hospitals, health plans, physicians, employers, government agencies and pharmaceutical companies. Consulting sat down with him to discuss the healthcare marketplace.
Consulting: You're a few months into this new role, what's your view of healthcare right now?
Nackel: I am absolutely bullish on the healthcare opportunities right now. Any time there's a major change to the healthcare industry, consulting has always been there to lead the charge. In the payer sector, I see a lot of major challenges and wholesale changes, but the most significant is major cost reductions. Major players are talking about nine-figure cuts in costs, we're talking hundreds of million of dollars in cost cutting. And a few are even talking about cutting $1 billion or more. That's unprecedented in this industry.
Consulting: What specific areas are clients focused on?
Nackel: I think the first area is strategy and planning that's taking place at the highest level. Clients are looking at what products they have and what markets they serve, etc. The second level is around process improvement. That's a big opportunity. Clients are looking at how they do business—methods, technologies—and realizing that maybe they aren't getting the economies of scale. The third area is business process outsourcing, both onshore and offshore. Clients are examining where their core skills are and moving their non-core skills to entities that are better prepared to handle them. I like to say that clients are focused
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